This Week on Galileo - May 12-18, 1997
Playback of encounter data from the just completed Ganymede encounter starts immediately and comprises the bulk of activity on Galileo for this week. There are approximately 40 playback days before the start of the next encounter (with Callisto) scheduled to start on June 22. This week's playback highlights observations of the non-targeted flyby of Callisto that occured early in the encounter period. In addition, the fields and particles survey of the magnetosphere, part of the second "mini-tour" of the mission, continues through the playback period.
The NIMS (Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) observations returned during this week include a global observation of Callisto and an observation of Callisto's south pole region. These observations were designed to investigate and determine what materials and minerals reside on the surface of Callisto and how these materials are distributed on said surface. NIMS also returns higher resolution observations of the cratered regions of Buri and Adlinda with the same objectives of being able to establish the composition and structure of the regions.
The SSI (Solid State Imaging camera) observations included in the playback include a medium resolution image of a region of the surface of Callisto that was not seen during the Voyager flybys. A medium resolution image of the south pole region of Callisto is also returned. This region was seen poorly both by Voyager and elsewhere in Galileo's satellite tour. Finally, a medium resolution single-color image of the Adlinda region complements data obtained by other remote sensing instruments.
Last on the playback schedule and continuing into next week, the high resolution fields and particles observation of the plasma sheet of Jupiter's magnetosphere is transmitted to earth. This recording, taken for two and a half hours and centered on the crossing of the plasma sheet, will be correlated with Jupiter aurora observations taken by the UVS (Ultraviolet Spectrometer) instrument.