Douglas Isbell
Headquarters, Washington, DC            October 12, 1995
(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Franklin O'Donnell
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
(Phone:  818/354-5011)

RELEASE:  95-182

GALILEO SPACECRAFT ANOMALY BEING INVESTIGATED

        Engineering data returned from NASA's Jupiter-bound
Galileo spacecraft last night indicates a problem with the
spacecraft's tape recorder, project officials report.

        Project officials say a week or more may be required
for the problem to be isolated or well-understood, but that
the spacecraft remains otherwise healthy and in contact with
controllers on Earth.

        The problem was detected shortly after Galileo took
an image of Jupiter and its major moons from 22 million miles
away.  After taking the three images required for a color
photograph to be produced, the tape recorder used to store
the data was commanded to rewind.  Data received from Galileo
suggest the tape recorder did not stop as expected after rewinding.

        "Galileo engineers have commanded the tape recorder
to a standby mode while they investigate further," said
Galileo Project Manager William J. O'Neil of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA.  Project engineers
are proceeding slowly and cautiously to understand the problem,
according to O'Neil, and are avoiding sending unnecessary
commands to the spacecraft.  In addition to analyzing spacecraft
telemetry, engineers are working with an identical tape recorder
in a laboratory spacecraft mockup on the ground.

        "The next scheduled spacecraft operation that we need
to perform is a routine thruster flushing in about two
weeks," said O'Neil.  "We want to take the time in the
interim to understand this problem in detail."

                        -end-

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