This Week On Galileo - August 17-23, 1998
Several activities are on Galileo's to do list this week as the spacecraft reaches the farthest distance from Jupiter for this orbit and starts heading back closer to Jupiter again. Playback of science pictures and other information stored on the spacecraft's onboard tape recorder continues this week, but is interrupted twice to perform engineering activities. On Monday, the spacecraft performs a turn to keep its antenna pointed toward Earth. In addition, regular maintenance of the tape recorder is scheduled for Sunday.
This week's playback schedule continues with data gathered during Galileo's May encounter with Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The near-infrared mapping spectrometer returns two observations of Io that target the volcanic regions of Pele, Marduk and Reiden. These are followed by a regional map of Europa obtained by the spacecraft camera and a part of a global map of Europa also performed by the near-infrared mapping spectrometer. The final observation of the week was obtained by the spacecraft camera and looks at a region of Europa that is unusually rugged, containing a series of pits and mounds. The observed area is located just east of the Tyre Macula region.
Concurrent with playback, data is collected by the spacecraft's six fields and particles instruments which provides a second look at the deep magnetotail region of the Jovian magnetosphere. The first survey of this region was conducted during Galileo's primary mission in July and August, 1997, approximately one year ago. Information obtained during the current orbit will add to our understanding of how plasma escapes from the inner portions of the magnetosphere, and will help identify changes in the magnetosphere over the period of a year.