Galileo Europa 6 Flyby Entry Timeline

Europa 6 Flyby was 20 February 1997

Galileo's second flyby of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, occured on 20 February 1997 at 17:03 UTC. At that time, Galileo came about 587 km from the surface of Europa (or about 1.4 Europa radii from its center). As measured to the center of Europa, this is nearly 340 times closer than Voyager 1 came in 1979 and about 95 times closer than Voyager 2 did later that same year. This is also about 16% closer than the altitude which Galileo came to Europa on 19 December 1996. During this time, observations were also made of the Jovian magnetosphere as well as of the other satellites of Jupiter.

The following timeline is a list of different events which will occur beginning with the official start of the Europa 6 (the number actually refers to the Galileo orbit number) encounter and proceding until the last data from the encounter are played back. The times are given in Universal Time (UTC) of the event at the spacecraft. 

Date/Time             Instrument    Event
________              __________    _____
17 Feb  00:00                       Start of Europa 6 encounter
        00:15                       Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 20
        21:43         SSI           First Io monitoring observation

18 Feb  08:34         UVS/EUV       Real-time Jupiter aurora observation

19 Feb  00:55         UVS           Jupiter auroral map
        02:31         SSI           First belt zone observation
        23:01         SSI           Thebe imaging

20 Feb  12:03         NIMS          Europa Terra Incognito observation
        12:04                       Io closest approach (401,000 km)
        16:05         NIMS          Europa Arigope Linea observation
        16:36         F&P           Europa Alfven wing recording
        17:03         PPR           Europa high-resolution closest approach observation
                                    Start Earth occultation by Europa
                                    Europa closest approach (2,150 km)
        17:04                       Start solar occultation by Europa
        17:16                       End Earth occultation by Europa
        17:17                       End solar occultation by Europa
        20:53                       Jupiter closest approach (652,000 km)
        21:06         F&P           Jupiter magnetic equator recording
        21:55         SSI           Amalthea imaging

21 Feb  01:23         SSI           Europa global color map
        10:04         NIMS          Last belt zone observation
        10:56         SSI           Last Io monitoring observation
        16:26                       Ganymede closest approach (318,000 km)

22 Feb  22:55                       Callisto closest approach (279,000 km)

23 Feb  01:30                       Start playback

24 Feb  04:00                       Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 21

25 Feb  11:47                       Science turn (solar occultation)
        13:27                       Start solar occultation by Jupiter
        15:33         NIMS          Jupiter rings observation

26 Feb  00:44                       Turn to return to Earth point
        01:15                       End solar occultation by Jupiter
        03:00         F&P           End Europa 6 real-time survey
        19:13                       Start Earth occultation by Jupiter

27 Feb  08:38                       End Earth occultation by Jupiter

14 Mar  01:15                       Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 22

17 Mar  01:10                       Turn for attitude maintenance

21 Mar  01:59         F&P           Start Ganymede 7 real-time survey

30 Mar  16:00                       End of data playback (Europa 6)

Other Event Related News

| NSSDC Galileo page | NSSDC Planetary page |

Author/Curator:
Dr. Edwin V. Bell, II
Mail Code 690.1
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771
+1-301-286-1187
ed.bell@nasa.gov
[NSSDC Logo]
NASA Official: Dr. Ed Grayzeck V1.0, 01 April 1997
Last updated: 07 February 2002, EVB II