This Week On Galileo
February 1, 1999
The Galileo spacecraft is in a stable and safe configuration, having been placed there by on-board fault detection software. Preliminary analysis by the flight team indicates that the spacecraft was placed in safe mode, canceling all remaining encounter commands, after the fault software detected that a spacecraft turn was taking too long to complete.
The safing event is believed to have occurred late Sunday night PST [see Note 1], one hour after Jupiter closest approach, and four hours after Europa closest approach. Status information received from the spacecraft suggests that all Europa closest approach observations were successfully stored on the spacecraft's on-board tape recorder.
During the next few days, the flight team will continue analysis of the events leading up to the safing event and develop a recovery plan. Stay tuned for more updates as details become available.