Galileo Europa Mission Status - July 6, 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 is operating normally as it continues processing and sending to Earth pictures and science information gathered during its late May flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa. The data, stored on Galileo's onboard tape recorder, include two images of an unusually rugged region of Europa, located east of an impact crater called Tyre Macule. This rugged region has pits, mounds and a very prominent ridge. Another image depicts a previously unexplored, blotchy-looking region of Europa, where contaminants may be present in the ice.
This week's schedule of data to be sent to Earth includes material that had been previously transmitted. This second transmission allows the Galileo team to make up for any communications problems, to choose new data to transmit or to re-process data with different parameters.
A spacecraft maneuver was successfully completed June 26 when Galileo was at "apojove," or the point in its orbit farthest from Jupiter. A routine turn designed to point the spacecraft's antennas toward Earth was executed July 1.
Preliminary results are in from a routine gyroscope performance test performed June 30. The results indicate a minor improvement in gyro performance since the flyby of Europa in late May, when the spacecraft was closest to Jupiter and its high radiation levels. However, flight engineers believe the improvement is too small to justify any modifications to parameters in Galileo's attitude control computer software. The software was modified in March so the computer could correctly interpret anomalous gyro data. The anomaly has been occurring since December 1997.
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