Galileo's third flyby of Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, occurred on 05 April 1997 at 07:10 UTC. At that time, Galileo came about 3095 km from the surface of Ganymede (or about 3.1 Ganymede radii from its center). As measured to the center of Ganymede, this is 2.6 times farther away than Galileo came to Ganymede during its closest approach on its second orbit back in September 1996. During this time, observations will also be 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 Ganymede 7 (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
________ __________ _____
30 Mar 16:00 Start of Ganymede 7 encounter
18:48 F&P Dawn-side plasma sheet recording
31 Mar 15:49 Adrastea OPNAV observation
01 Apr 04:40 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 23
13:00 UVS/EUV Io torus observation
02 Apr 12:19 UVS/EUV Real-time Jupiter aurora observation
16:42 SSI Callisto global color image
16:48 UVS Jupiter auroral map
16:51 Callisto closest approach (637,000 km)
18:47 NIMS Callisto global coverage
03 Apr 02:09 SSI First Small Red Spot observation
05:11 NIMS First Io monitoring observation
17:42 SSI Europa full-disk image
21:11 Io closest approach (531,000 km)
04 Apr 02:35 PPR Europa dayside global thermal map
05:52 NIMS Europa Tyre Macula region
05:59 Europa closest approach (251,000 km)
11:04 Jupiter closest approach (651,000 km)
05 Apr 05:08 NIMS Last Io monitoring observation
06:31 SSI Ganymede Nicholson Regio
06:39 SSI Ganymede Kittu region
06:44 F&P Ganymede Alfven wing recording
07:10 Ganymede closest approach (5,730 km)
07:11 PPR Ganymede high-resolution observation
14:23 NIMS Ganymede global surface map
06 Apr 15:54 NIMS Last Small Red Spot observation
16:00 Start of data playback (Ganymede 7)
08 Apr 08:00 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 24
18 Apr 18:38 Turn for attitude maintenance
21 Apr 10:00 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 25
22 Apr 04:00 F&P End Ganymede 7 real-time survey
02 May 18:00 F&P Start Ganymede 8 real-time survey
04 May 16:00 End of data playback (Ganymede 7)
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