This Week on Galileo - August 25-31, 1997
Galileo usually runs according to schedule, which is why "This Week on Galileo" can list upcoming events. But this week, a small computer glitch means that we haven't finished planning exactly what data will be arriving from the spacecraft. Data about the tail of Jupiter's magnetic field will definitely be included, and also possibly some Jupiter and Callisto images.
A late update to the playback schedule prevents us from knowing the exact contents of Galileo's playback schedule at the time of publishing of this week's edition of "This Week on Galileo". A minor glitch in playback planning software caused playback planners to believe there were a smaller number of data "bits" that could be transmitted to Earth this week. In wanting to take advantage of every available bit, playback planners scrambled late last week to adjust the playback schedule thus making it possible to take advantage of the increase in transmission capability. The latter half of this week's playback plan is scheduled to be approved Monday morning and transmitted to the spacecraft Monday afternoon.
The first half of this week's playback schedule contains the remainder of the magnetotail observation taken while the spacecraft was at the current orbit's apojove (farthest point from Jupiter), earlier this month. The playback of this observation is expected to be completed sometime Wednesday; after that, the new playback schedule is expected to take effect.
The updated schedule will most likely contain the playback of observations of Jupiter and Callisto taken during Galileo's previous encounter in late June. Among the possible observations included on the schedule are high-resolution data taken by the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) of the Anarr crater region, the bright crater Skuld, the Valhalla region (Callisto's largest multi- ringed system), and some unknown regions of Callisto's northern latitudes. These NIMS observations are expected to provide information on the composition and distribution of materials in these regions. The Solid State Imaging (SSI) camera also looked at the Valhalla region in addition to performing observations of a large central pit crater and its surroundings. The latter of these observations will be used to determine the number and size distribution of craters in this region (which could give clues to its age) as well as to information on the shapes of craters on icy surfaces. The high-time resolution recording of fields and particles data taken during the flyby of Callisto may also be included in the latter half of this week's schedule. This recording will provide scientists with another snap-shot (the first was taken during the Callisto-3 encounter) of how Callisto interacts with Jupiter's magnetosphere. Jupiter observations that might make it on to the playback schedule include observations of the Great Red Spot and of a plume head region taken by SSI. Finally, a few observations by SSI of the minor satellites, possibly Metis, could also be played back.