This Week On Galileo
December 14-20, 1998
Galileo spends most of this week processing and transmitting science observations taken last week and stored on the spacecraft's on-board tape recorder. In parallel with playback, the fields and particles instruments continue their survey of Jupiter's magnetosphere. These activities are interrupted on Friday so the spacecraft can perform a flight path correction.
First on the playback schedule is the return of a series of images taken by the spacecraft camera. The images capture Saturn's moon Titan, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and will be used by camera engineers to calibrate some of the camera filters. Next on the schedule, the near-infrared mapping spectrometer returns an observation of the star Sirius. The data obtained from the observation will be used to calibrate some of the instrument's detectors. Finally, the fields and particles instruments will start returning data obtained during a five hour recording of Jupiter's magnetosphere. The data were recorded as the spacecraft flew through the center of a region known as the plasma sheet. This region is largely unexplored and is a region of Jupiter's magnetosphere where the solar wind exerts a varying influence on Jupiter's magnetic field and on the plasma therein.