Galileo Europa Mission Status - June 5, 1998
MEDIA RELATIONS 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 has spent this past week processing and sending to Earth images and science information gathered during its latest Europa flyby, from May 30 through June 1. Data had been stored on the spacecraft's onboard tape recorder and includes camera observations of the Cilix region of Europa, which contains the largest known massif on Europa. A massif is a block of crust, surrounded by faults, that has been displaced without breaking apart. Other images taken by the camera include a very rugged region of Europa east of the Tyre Macula impact crater, with pits, mounds, and a very prominent ridge.
The flyby went well, with the spacecraft swooping over Europa at an altitude of 2,516 kilometers (1,563 miles). After the point of closest approach, the gyroscopes switched on as expected, but after about half an hour, the spacecraft turned them off. The Galileo team is currently investigating this minor anomaly. Nonetheless, the gyros have been turned back on. A similar event has happened only once before--on August 28, 1993.
A standard gyro performance and calibration test was run on June 3, and results indicate the performance of the gyros is unchanged since the spacecraft's previous Europa encounter in March. The gyro anomaly is expected to have very minimal effect on the data gathered during this latest encounter.
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