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OFJ Field Journal from Marcia Segura - 11/10/95
NIMS IS ON AND THE TELEMETRY IS GOOD
Well, the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer was turned on Monday, November
6 as we get ready for Jupiter approach and the beginning of Galileo's main
mission. The radio signals from the spacecraft, or "telemetry," indicate
that NIMS is operating normally. At some point in the near future, the instrument
will get new software to enable NIMS to work with the new spacecraft software.
The instrument will remain on for the next 2 years, making observations
of Jupiter, the rings, and the large satellites.
At this time, had things gone per the plan, we would be anxiously anticipating
the return of data from Jupiter's moon Io - the best to date. But alas,
it's not to be. As you've undoubtedly heard, Galileo's tape recorder has
had some problems. The tape isn't broken; engineers are still analyzing
exactly what's wrong. The project, in an effort to protect the tape recorder
from damage, has decided not to collect remote sensing (imaging) data
until after the probe data has been played back and the engineers have
finished their work. Whatever the engineers find, I am sure that it will
have an effect on the science observations planned throughout the mission.
It really hasn't been a very easy time for the science teams on Galileo.
Losing the Io encounter and the Jupiter Probe Entry Site observations
has been disappointing and frustrating for all involved. I'll attempt
to describe the feelings in this way. Let's just say... You're going out
on the town. You have tickets to your favorite play (they cost you an
arm and leg) and you're going out for dinner at Spago's (Wolfgang Puck's
ritzy restaurant here in Los Angeles). You splurge on a new dress for
the occasion (the VISA bill comes next month). On the day of the big event,
here's what happens.... no hot water when you shower, a run in your pantyhose,
the waiter at Spago's tips your FULL wine glass into your lap, the valet
attendant misplaces your car keys, you miss the opening act and the usher
won't let you in until intermission!! As you can tell, the past three
weeks haven't been fun... but enough about that!
This week marks the start of science planning for the ninth orbit, or
"C9" as it's called. "C" stands for Callisto (another of Jupiter's satellites,
and the one that Galileo passes the closest to) and 9 stands for ninth
orbit. I'll be spending a lot of my time working as the lead NIMS coordinator
for this orbit. (Each NIMS coordinator has assigned orbits and assigned
targets; mine is Callisto) I'm responsible for making sure that all the
NIMS observations planned for the C9 orbit are properly put into a sequence
(computer program) which will tell the instrument and the spacecraft what
to do. C9 will have 70 or so NIMS observations (Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede,
and Callisto are all included in that total). I'll be attending MANY meetings
and negotiating with other science teams for observing time and other
resources, since all the instruments want as much observing time as possible.
We'll continue working on this until the end of January.
Meanwhile, I'm still involved with testing the new NIMS software. Many
hours this week was used helping to analyze the results of our latest
test. Bob Mehlman (one of our programmers - his office is at UCLA) and
I spent some time discussing the test results. We had some questions that
we couldn't answer ourselves, so we arranged to meet with Tal Brady (the
ultimate expert on Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) software). As it turns
out, we uncovered a "bug" in the code. The software group will fix it
and then we'll test it again. Such is life on Galileo ....
Life outside of Galileo this week was filled with the normal everyday
stuff. A football game for Matthew on Tuesday; they lost by a touchdown.
The flu caught up with him on Wednesday (I had it last week). Parent-teacher
conference on Thursday (it was planned and reports were good). Adrian
called to give his new phone number (his room assignment at Emerson changed)
and remind us to bring thermal underwear with us on our upcoming Boston
visit. No, I didnMt go sky-diving, bungee jumping, or drag racing. Maybe
next week....
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
Weeks end. Marcia Segura "Online from Jupiter"
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