NASA's Galileo spacecraft today passed the closest point to
Jupiter of the spacecraft's current orbit of the giant planet,
and remains healthy as it heads for a flyby of Callisto, the
outermost of Jupiter's four largest moons. Galileo swung within
about 460,000 kilometers (about 285,000 miles) of Jupiter's
cloud tops at 10:33 a.m. PDT time, according to engineers
managing the spacecraft from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. Flying that close to Jupiter exposes the
spacecraft's electronics to potential harm from intense
radiation belts. "We have indications Galileo is bearing up well
to the harsh environment, but it is still in a challenging
environment," said Dr. Eilene Theilig, Galileo project manager
at JPL. "As anticipated, we are seeing an intermittent anomalous
behavior in the camera, similar to what we saw during Galileo's
last encounter five months ago. Prior to high-priority
observations, we plan to cycle power to the instrument off and
on to decrease the risk of losing images. Cycli