PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF.  91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011

Contact:  Franklin O'Donnell

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                    October 12, 1995

GALILEO SPACECRAFT ANOMALY BEING INVESTIGATED

     Engineering data returned from NASA's Jupiter-bound 
Galileo spacecraft last night indicate a problem with the 
spacecraft's tape recorder, project officials report.
          
     The problem was detected shortly after Galileo took an 
image of Jupiter and its major moons from 36 million 
kilometers (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.
     
     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 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."

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10-12-95 FOD
#9569