This Week on Galileo - April 14-20, 1997
The fields and particles survey of the magetosphere continues in this, the second week of "cruise" following Galileo's last encounter with Ganymede. In addition to playback, this week's activities include a spacecraft turn (Friday) to keep the spacecraft's antenna pointed near the Earth and the transmission of commands (Sunday) required to execute the next orbit trim maneuver which will occur early next week.
Observations from the spacecraft's non-targeted flyby of Europa seem to be one of the main spotlights of this week's playback. NIMS (Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) returns an observation taken at regional resolution as part of the tour-long campaign to completely map all Galilean satellites. This portion of the map is centered around the lineated feature known as Flexus Linea. PPR (Photopolarimeter Radiometer) returns various thermal observations including both dayside and darkside maps. SSI (Solid State Imaging camera) returns low solar phase angle photometry (measurements of the intensity of light) observations and observations of crater features near the terminator (the dividing line between day and night). Of particular interest is a NIMS observation of the region known as Tyre Macula. This observation aims to search for differences in the mineral compostion of the region in an attempt to understand the origin of this circular feature. A set of observations of this region was coordinated amongst all four remote sensing instruments (UVS, PPR and SSI).
The playback schedule also includes the transmission of Jupiter observations taken by NIMS and PPR. NIMS will return obseravtions of the small red spot featured in this past encounter and of a hot spot near the same latitude as that of the atmospheric probe entry site. PPR also returns observations of the small red spot, but also returns a couple of observations taken of the Great Red Spot. Io observations by NIMS (thermal and chemical), SSI (topographical) and PPR (thermal) continue to be returned during the week. Finally, a global observation by NIMS and a thermal observation by PPR, both of Ganymede, complete the playback plans for this week.