This Week on Galileo 15 – 21 Jan 2001

Galileo completes week twelve of a 14-week-long survey of the Jovian magnetosphere.

This week finds Galileo completing week 12 of a 14-week-long survey of the Jovian magnetosphere.
Playback of data stored during the spacecraft’s December 2000 passage through the Jupiter system is not
scheduled to start until early next month. This is a relatively quiet week with no major activities taking place
on the spacecraft.

Galileo’s survey data are recorded to its onboard tape recorder five times this week. Typically, these data are
almost immediately packaged and transmitted to Earth. However, radio antennas of the Deep Space Network
(DSN) are scheduled to listen to Galileo for only about 116 hours (out of a total 168 hours possible in a
given week). For the hours during which no DSN coverage is available, the spacecraft makes use of a data
buffer (a section of computer memory) to store up to seven hours of survey data at one time. When the buffer
is full, and the DSN is not listening, the data are recorded to the tape recorder to prevent data loss.