[meteorite-list] Galileo Team Disbanding as Long Jupiter Tour Winds Down

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:31 2004
Message-ID: <200302262020.MAA01290_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
February 26, 2003
     
News Release: 2003-026

Galileo Team Disbanding as Long Jupiter Tour Winds Down

The flight team for NASA's Jupiter-orbiting Galileo spacecraft will
cease operations on Friday, Feb. 28 after a final playback of
scientific data from the robotic explorer's tape recorder.

The team has written commands for the onboard computer to manage the
spacecraft for its short remaining lifetime. Galileo will coast for
the next seven months before transmitting a few hours of science
measurements in real time, leading up to a Sept. 21 plunge into
Jupiter's atmosphere.

"This mission has exemplified successful team efforts to overcome
obstacles to make outstanding discoveries," said Dr. Eilene Theilig,
Galileo project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. "While the team is sad to see it come to an end, there is great
pride in Galileo's remarkable accomplishments."

In the years since astronauts deployed Galileo from the cargo bay of
Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989, the mission has produced a string of
discoveries about asteroids, a fragmented comet, Jupiter's atmosphere,
Jupiter's magnetic environment, and especially about the geologic
diversity of Jupiter's four largest moons. The prime mission ended six
years ago, after two years of orbiting Jupiter. NASA extended the
mission three times to continue taking advantage of Galileo's unique
capabilities for accomplishing valuable science.

Now, the onboard supply of propellant is nearly depleted. Without
propellant, the spacecraft would not be able to point its antenna
toward Earth nor adjust its trajectory, so controlling the spacecraft
would no longer be possible. Before that could happen, the flight team
last year put Galileo on course for disposal by a dive into the
crushing pressure of Jupiter's atmosphere. This strategy eliminates
any possibility of an unwanted impact between the spacecraft and the
moon Europa. Galileo's own discovery of a likely subsurface ocean on
Europa has raised interest in the possibility of life there and
concern about protecting it.

On Nov. 5, 2002, the orbiter passed closer to Jupiter than it had ever
ventured before, flying near an inner moon named Amalthea and through
part of Jupiter's gossamer ring to begin its 35th and last orbit
around the giant planet. This elongated farewell loop will take
Galileo farther from Jupiter than it has been since before it entered
orbit in 1995, to a point more than 26 million kilometers (16 million
miles) away on April 14 before heading back in for impact.

Scientific data recorded on the tape recorder during last November's
flyby have been gradually played back for transmission to Earth since
the flight team repaired radiation damage to the tape recorder in
December. Transmissions during a communication session with a NASA
Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif. Thursday night and
early Friday will finish the playback.

"After this month, we have no further activities planned until the day
of impact," Theilig said.

The Galileo flight team numbered about 300 people at its peak during
the prime mission, but has run much leaner in recent years, with about
30 since the Amalthea flyby. That smaller team is now disbanding,
mostly to work on other JPL-managed NASA missions that are in
development or already flying.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. Additional information about the mission and its
discoveries is available online at

http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov .

-end-
Received on Wed 26 Feb 2003 03:20:53 PM PST