Today on Galileo - February 16, 1997
This afternoon Galileo starts executing the first set of commands of its second consecutive encounter with Europa. This set of commands will control the spacecraft's activity through the end of the fifth day of the encounter period. During this encounter, Galileo will continue its close-up study of Europa which will be highlighted with a flyby at a targeted altitude of only 586 km, even closer than its previous encounter with this moon. The observations of Jupiter's atmosphere scheduled for this encounter are of features known as White Ovals. Other targets for this encounter are Io, Thebe, Amalthea, Ganymede and Callisto. The survey of the magnetosphere performed by Fields and Particles instruments continues during this orbit but also includes a high-rate observation as Galileo crosses through the magnetic equator of the magnetosphere. All in all another exciting encounter with Jupiter's system.
Today, the encounter sequence of commands starts to execute in the latter part of the day, at about 3:05 pm (Pacific Standard Time). During this encounter the radio signals from Galileo will take about 50 minutes to reach Earth. By about 3:55 pm, the Galileo team will receive the first signals indicating that the encounter sequence of commands has begun to execute. First on the schedule is to finish off residual playback plans from the previous encounter. Recall that Galileo's playback plans were hampered by the effects of solar conjunction. Playback plans have been extended a few hours into the next encounter in order to get as much of that data down before writing over it with a whole new set of data. Once playback plans have been completed, the Fields and Particles survey for this encounter will be initiated. This survey will continue through out the entire encounter period. At the end of the day, the spacecraft will start to perform a tape recorder conditioning activity.
Come back tomorrow to learn more about tape recorder conditioning and what else Galileo will be doing.