This Week On Galileo - September 7-13, 1998
This week Galileo continues by playing back science information stored on the spacecraft's onboard tape recorder and by acquiring real-time fields and particles data. A routine performance test of the spacecraft's attitude control gyroscopes is also performed this week.
The fields and particles instruments continue with their observation of Jupiter's magnetotail region. The magnetotail is that part of the magnetosphere that has been shaped into a long tail by the solar wind. As in previous weeks, playback is interrupted during selected periods to enhance fields and particles data acquisition. The enhancement results from not having to share data processing resources and radio transmission rates with playback data. The information obtained during this observation will allow scientists to study how the particles in Jupiter's magnetosphere interact with the solar wind.
Tape recorder playback continues with data gathered during Galileo's May encounter with Jupiter and Europa. The spacecraft camera contributes two observations to this week's schedule. The first contains the final portions of the observation of Europa which began transmitting to Earth last week. It contains a set of moderate resolution images of a region of mottled terrain. The second camera observation is the first of a pair of Io observations taken while Io was eclipsed from the sun by Jupiter. The first observation was taken at the beginning of the eclipse period and the second, near the middle of the eclipse. By comparing these two observations scientists will examine whether or not there are changes in the brightness of glowing hotspots as the eclipse progresses.
The rest of this week's playback schedule is dominated by observations performed by the near infrared mapping spectrometer. Three observations contain information on Europa. The first observation targets a region on Europa's leading side and is expected to contain information on surface materials that have not been affected by magnetospheric bombardment that is typical of Europa's trailing side. The second observation contributes to a global surface map of Europa, and the third provides special emphasis on identifying non-ice components of Europa's surface. Two observations of Jupiter are returned by the near infrared mapping spectrometer. They are part of a 3 observation set designed to search for composition and temperature variations across a region of Jupiter's belts and cloud zones.