Galileo's Mission at Jupiter - The Calm Before the Storm

Today is the final full day of the cruise portion of Galileo's orbit of Jupiter before the onset of activities which cover the 30th full orbit of the giant planet and its satellite moons, including a close flyby of Callisto next Friday. The final preparations are underway to make sure the spacecraft is ready for the next week of concentrated observations.

Today the playback process is stopped. This process has been reading data off of the on-board tape recorder for the past 5 months. These data were stored during the last flyby of the satellite Ganymede during December of 2000 and during a calibration period on April 22 and 23 of this year. Routine maintenance of the tape recorder begins. This activity is designed to prevent the tape from sticking, and in this case, to get it ready for a full load of new data, which will be recorded over the six days.