This Week on Galileo

June 7-13, 1999

Galileo Spends This Week Retrieving Stored Data

Galileo spends this week retrieving stored data from its onboard tape recorder and then processing, packaging, and transmitting the data to Earth. This week's data contains observations made by the spacecraft's solid-state imaging camera, Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, photopolarimeter radiometer, and suite of fields and particles instruments. The observations contain information describing Callisto, Io, Europa, Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere and the Io torus, and were acquired during Galileo's previous encounter in early May.

During the first part of the week, the solid-state imaging camera returns three observations of Callisto. The first contains a dark feature that is believed to be a cryovolcanic flow and could provide evidence of ancient volcanism. The second consists of images of cratered terrain. It is designed to gather statistics on the size distribution of craters on Callisto's surface and will help scientists estimate the age of Callisto's surface. The third is an image of Bran crater, a young, single-ring crater that provides a good view of Callisto's crust. The near-infrared mapping spectrometer also returns an observation of Bran crater to provide information on the chemical composition and variation of the region. In other observations, the near-infrared mapping spectrometer returns measurements of the chemical composition of two different regions.

In the latter part of the week, the spacecraft continues playback with a second pass through the data stored on the tape recorder. This second opportunity at playback allows the replay of data lost in transmission to Earth, reprocessing of data using different parameters, or return of additional new data.

During this time, the near-infrared mapping spectrometer returns measurements of the surface composition in the region near the Prometheus volcano on Io, and an observation of Europa taken while it was in Jupiter's shadow. The photopolarimeter radiometer returns an observation which was designed to find small temperature variations within one of Jupiter's cloud belts. The near-infrared mapping spectrometer continues with playback by returning three observations of a turbulent region in the wake of the Great Red Spot, and one observation of a hot spot region.

The Fields and Particles instruments return data to fill in gaps in their measurements of the plasma and magnetic and electric fields of the Io torus. And finally, the solid-state imaging camera returns a series of images showing the evolution of atmospheric waves along the equator and cloud motions in Jupiter's north and south equatorial belts, and in a high speed jet in the northern hemisphere.

For more information on the Galileo spacecraft and its mission to Jupiter, please visit the Galileo home page.

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Last updated: June 7, 1999

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