Galileo Europa Mission Status - September 28, 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 completed its latest flyby of Europa on schedule and on target. On Friday, Sept. 25, at 8:54 p.m. PDT, Galileo flew over the icy moon at an altitude of 3,582 kilometers (2,226 miles).
The flyby was performed in cruise mode without Galileo's gyroscopes, because the gyros activated a fault protection program last Thursday, Sept. 24. The onboard star scanner was used instead as the primary reference for determining the spacecraft's orientation in space.
Galileo is conducting its planned observations, which include taking images of Europa's surface. Because of the gyro anomaly, some observations taken by the near-infrared mapping spectrometer will be of less-than-optimal quality.
Galileo project engineers are studying the anomaly and are trying to determine the source of the fault.
The next Europa flyby is scheduled for November 22. Galileo Europa Mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
The Galileo Europa Mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Return to Project Galileo Homepage