Today on Galileo - November 8-9, 1997
The last two days of the Europa - Orbit 11 encounter period become relatively quiet compared to previous days. A few science observations are performed of Jupiter and Io before the spacecraft is turned back to its regular Earth-pointing attitude. The spacecraft continues its departure from the inner portions of Jupiter's system and reaches distances from Jupiter of 20, 25 and 30 Jupiter Radii (1.4 million kilometers or 889,000 miles, 1.8 million kilometers or 1.1 million miles, and 2.1 million kilometers or 1.3 million miles) at about 1 AM Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Saturday, about 1:30 PM PST on Saturday, and about 3 AM PST on Sunday, respectively.
The Solid-State Imaging (SSI) camera spends the day looking at a couple of Io's plumes - Loki and Kanehikili. SSI also looks at Jupiter's rings and at Io as it becomes eclipsed from the sun by Jupiter. The Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) also looks at Io while in eclipse and the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) spends the day looking for Jupiter's brown barge features.
Sunday morning is quite barren of activity. The fields and particles instruments are essentially the only instruments collecting data as part of their survey of the Jovian magnetosphere. The encounter sequence of commands is completed at 8 AM PST on Sunday morning. This not only brings to an end the last multi-orbit magnetospheric survey of the Jovian magnetophere, but also completes the final encounter of Galileo's primary mission.
However, the Galileo spacecraft is far from having outlived its usefulness. After completing the playback of the data captured during the last eight days, the spacecraft embarks on a new and exciting adventure called the Galileo Europa Mission or GEM. The first encounter of GEM is scheduled to occur in just over a month on December 16th!
Stay Tuned to this URL for all the details including the return of This Week on Galileo on Monday, November 10th.