Galileo Europa Mission Status - September 21, 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 prepares for its next flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa , with closest approach scheduled for this Friday, September 25, at 8:54 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The spacecraft will fly about 3,582 kilometers (2,226 miles) above the icy moon's surface.
To prepare for this encounter, Galileo will perform a final flight path correction tomorrow, Tuesday, September 22, and regular maintenance of its onboard tape recorder on Thursday, September 24. That maintenance will take place right after the recorder finishes playing back and transmitting to Earth science information gathered during a previous Europa flyby that took place on May 31.
This week's batch of pictures and information to be played back includes four observations. Two were taken by Galileo's onboard camera, with one showing Io while eclipsed from the Sun by Jupiter, and the second providing a regional map of Europa. In addition, the near-infrared mapping spectrometer will return observations of Io and provide more information on its intense volcanic activity.
The Galileo Europa Mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
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