This Week On Galileo
November 2-8, 1998
Galileo continues to process and transmit science data stored on its onboard tape recorder. With this week's playback, we start the portion of the cruise phase used to fill gaps in previously returned data, select new data, or to re-process data with different parameters. Data playback is interrupted on Thursday to perform a standard test on the gyroscopes.
This week's playback schedule includes data from twelve observations. Six of them contain Europa data, four of them, Jupiter data, and two of them data describing Jupiter's rings.
The near-infrared mapping spectrometer returns two observations of Europa. The first will provide data on Europa's surface with a special emphasis on detecting non-ice components. The second, performed in conjunction with the ultraviolet spectrometer, captures data on Europa at a global scale. The photopolarimeter radiometer also returns two observations of Europa. Both of these measure thermal characteristics of Europa's night side, and are designed to allow scientists to increase their knowledge of the formation, composition and age of Europa's surface. The final two Europa observations are returned by the spacecraft camera. The first captures a region near Europa's terminator. The mosaic will show several terrain types that are considered to be the best evidence for the existence of a liquid layer under Europa's surface. The second is a global shape observation.
Three observations of Jupiter's newly formed white oval are returned this week. One observation contains measurements made by the near-infrared mapping spectrometer, and the other two, measurements by the spacecraft camera. This particular oval was formed in Spring 1998, when two other white ovals merged. The photopolarimeter radiometer returns the last Jupiter observation, which contains data to be used to characterize atmospheric temperature structure and thermal properties of the southern equatorial, tropical, and temperate belts.
Finally, the spacecraft camera returns two out of three images which display Jupiter's rings under varying lighting conditions. The different lighting conditions will allow scientists to get better ideas of the number and sizes of the particles that make up the rings.