Galileo Mission Status - December 10, 1996

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
     

The Galileo spacecraft is operating properly, with data playback from the recent flyby of the Jovian satellite Callisto continuing as engineers prepare the spacecraft for its upcoming first encounter with the intriguing moon Europa on December 19th.

Some images from the Callisto encounter are taking longer to return because the targets contain more variation in their scenes and therefore contain more data per frame. The Galileo flight team hopes to be able to complete most of the planned data return including Europa images, recorded during the Callisto encounter before the Europa encounter begins next week.

Last week, new software commands were successfully radioed to the spacecraft to further improve certain recording operations. In addition, Galileo's attitude control system received a parameter adjustment, and new flight software was installed in the spacecraft's dust instrument.

Recent results from Galileo's fields and particles experiments from studies of the moon Ganymede will be published in the science journal Nature this week. A NASA press briefing, televised live on NASA Television, is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12, at 11 a.m. Pacific time (2 p.m. Eastern time) to discuss the results and preview the upcoming Europa flyby. NASA Television is available through the Spacenet 2 satellite on transponder 5, channel 9, 69 degrees west longitude, frequency 3880 Mhz, audio subcarrier 6.8 Mhz, horizontal polarization.

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