Galileo Mission Status - August 6, 1997
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
On Thursday night, August 7 PDT at 11:09 pm Earth Received Time), Galileo will pass through its current orbit's apojove, which is the spacecraft's farthest point from Jupiter. At that point, the craft will be 143 Jupiter radii, or about 10.2 million kilometers (6.4 million miles) from Jupiter. This apojove marks Galileo's deepest pass through the Jovian magnetotail, the area of the planet's magnetosphere where the solar wind has blown the magnetosphere into a long tail.
Near apojove, the fields and particles instruments onboard Galileo will observe the magnetotail in high time resolution and record the data. This observation will help scientists learn more about the interaction of the solar wind and the Jovian magnetosphere. While this observation is being performed, Galileo's central computer will pause the playback of data from the tape recorder.
However, before and after this pause, Galileo will continue playing back science data from its June 25 Callisto encounter. Playback includes observations of Jupiter, its magnetosphere, Ganymede, Europa and minor satellites. Galileo's camera will return two observations of the minor satellites Metis and Adrastea, and one observation each of the Great Red Spot and a plume head region. There will be four observations of Ganymede, two by the photopolarimeter and two by the near-infrared mapping spectrometer, and one spectrometer observation of Europa. The first observations of Jupiter's magnetotail will also be returned before Galileo's next encounter.
On Thursday, the Galileo flight team will transmit commands for a near-apojove orbit trim maneuver that will execute on Friday. This will target the spacecraft for its closest approach point with Callisto on September 16, when the spacecraft flies by the satellite at an altitude of 538 kilometers (334 miles).
The Galileo spacecraft entered Jovian system orbit on December 7, 1995. Its primary mission will end on December 7 of this year following data return from its 10th and last primary mission encounter, which is with Europa on November 6. However, NASA has extended the mission for two more years so the craft can conduct an intensive study of Europa, with the goal of achieving one or two close flybys of Io, depending on spacecraft health, in the fall of 1999. The Galileo mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
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