earle@smeagol.UUCP (Greg Earle) (02/13/86)
At 4:00 PM PST, Wed. Feb. 12, there was a Galileo status meeting held here at JPL. Main points of interest to the net were: - The mission is officially postponed. The next Launch Window available is a 3 week period in June 1987. Previous launch date was end of this coming May. - It was predicted that if the spacecraft had been onboard Challenger, that there would NOT have been a serious radioactive materials leak. - It has not been decided whether to leave the spacecraft at KSC, or bring it back to JPL. Fuel storage is a main issue here. - No mention was made of the Ulysses project [if you aren't aware, Ulysses is the ESA/NASA project, formerly known as the International Solar Polar Mission, which was to be launched 5 days before Galileo, go out to Jupiter in order to use Jupiter's gravity boost to acheive an orbit over the Poles of the Sun.]. It can be assumed that Ulysses is grounded until the same time frame. - There were plans for Galileo to rendevous with an Asteroid on the way out; obviously this has been scrapped, although there is talk about finding a possible replacement asteroid that would be reachable considering the time of the next launch window. - The timing of the launch within the new launch window may have to be adjusted, because there is a chance that improper timing of the launch would get Galileo out to Jupiter orbit at the same time as Voyager II near-approach to Neptune (August 24, 1989). - At this time, no spare parts for Galileo will be freed up for use by other projects. This may have serious consequences for the next unmanned probe, formerly known as the Venus Radar Mapper (now officially Magellan), which is to be a 'Galileo Spare Parts' machine. Martin Marietta was to begin 'serious' work on Magellan subsystems after ~ April of this year. Disclaimer Disclaimer: This should be considered an Official NASA/JPL statement on this matter, 'cause that's what they told us ... -- Greg Earle JPL Spacecraft Data Systems group sdcrdcf!smeagol!earle (UUCP) ia-sun2!smeagol!earle@csvax.caltech.edu (ARPA)
kwan@smeagol.UUCP (Richard Kwan) (02/13/86)
Some notes on Greg Earle's Galileo Update <598@smeagol.UUCP>: > - It was predicted that if the spacecraft had been onboard Challenger, that > there would NOT have been a serious radioactive materials leak. That is the "prevailing expert opinion." JPL would like to do supporting analysis on that. However, the data from the shuttle accident is not yet easily attainable. Such an analysis is certainly not in the mainstream of the current investigation and might, in fact, impede progress. So we will have to wait. > - There were plans for Galileo to rendevous with an Asteroid on the way out; > obviously this has been scrapped, although there is talk about finding > a possible replacement asteroid that would be reachable considering the > time of the next launch window. Up to this time, the Lab has been proceeding on the 1986 launch plan, although knowing that a change in direction was imminent. (We were anticipating, but had not yet received the official directive to scrap the 1986 mission, and shoot for 1987. That came today.) Thus, no 1987 mission trajectories have been plotted yet. As they are plotted, we will undoubtedly see if there are other candidate asteroids available. The tragedy of the 1986 mission is that the target asteroid was a fairly large one, whose name I can't remember or pronounce. > Disclaimer Disclaimer: This should be considered an Official NASA/JPL > statement on this matter, 'cause that's what they told us ... Disclaimer Disclaimer Disclaimer: the information was intended to give new marching orders to us at JPL, and is thus considered highly reliable, but I haven't the foggiest what they would want to say in a press release. But yes, "that's what they told us ..." Rick Kwan JPL Spacecraft Data Systems group P.S. Go easy on me, Greg... :@)