Today on Galileo - December 21-22, 1996
The last two days of the Europa encounter are relatively quiet. The spacecraft passes through an Earth occultation and a Solar occultation during the weekend. During these timeperiods, the view from the spacecraft to the Earth and Sun, respectively, is blocked by Jupiter. The Earth occultation provides the radio science team with the third opportunity of the mission to observe Galileo's radio signal as it passes into and out of Jupiter's atmosphere (each time occurring in a different location). These observations allow scientists to build a structure profile of Jupiter's atmosphere as a function of depth.
The end of the Europa 4 encounter occurs early Sunday morning at about 5:50 PST.
This has been an incredibly exciting year for Galileo, and we really appreciate all of your tremendous support. We want to wish all of you, your families, and friends a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year. The Galileo Outreach Web Team will be spending the season with our family and friends, so we will resume our daily updates on Monday, January 6th. See you then!