This Week On Galileo
October 19-25, 1998
This week Galileo passes through apojove, the farthest point from Jupiter for this orbit, and starts its journey back toward the heart of the Jupiter system. During the week, the spacecraft continues to process and transmit to Earth science data stored on its onboard tape recorder. Apojove is reached on Saturday, when the spacecraft is 110 Jupiter Radii, or 7.9 million kilometers (4.9 million miles), from the center of the giant planet. Data playback is interrupted twice this week. On Friday, the spacecraft will execute a flight path correction and, on Sunday, it will perform regular maintenance on the tape recorder.
Four observations of icy Europa are returned to Earth this week. Two were performed by the near infrared mapping spectrometer in conjunction with the ultraviolet spectrometer. The first of these examines the high southern latitudes of Europa to look for non-ice materials and the second takes a look at a region of diffuse dark materials. The other two observations are from the spacecraft camera. The first observation is a mosaic of four images that capture an image of Thynia Linea. This feature is a major pull-apart gray band that is of much interest because it is very long and relatively unaltered. The second camera observation looks at terrain near Europa's south pole. These polar images will be compared to images of terrain near the equator to determine whether latitude plays a part in the types of terrains to be found. This comparison will allow scientists to refine their models on how Europa's surface is affected by tidal stresses.