An artist's concept of NASA's Galileo spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. Photo: NASA/JPL

There are no engineering activities scheduled this week, so the spacecraft can concentrate on playing back the data stored on the on-board tape recorder during its December flyby of Ganymede.

From the Solid State Imaging (SSI) camera, three observations will be seen this week. First up will be additional views from a set of color pictures of the boundary area of Ganymede's North Polar Cap. This flyby of Ganymede occurred near 60 degrees North latitude, and this will complete our view of the North Polar Cap. There are no more passes by Ganymede for the remainder of the mission, so this will be our last high-resolution look at the area. Also scheduled are images taken of an equatorial region of Ganymede named Dardanus Sulcus. These pictures will help trace a strike-slip fault that cuts through this region's dark terrain. Finally, some data from color Io observations which were lost in earlier trasmissions will be replayed.

From the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS), data taken at moderate spatial resolution of Ganymede will be returned, as well as a global image of Ganymede obtained with the current full complement of NIMS wavelengths. This will give information about the composition of different areas of the satellite surface. Infrared observations of Io help to monitor that satellite's volcanic activity. In cooperation with the Cassini Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument, NIMS observations were also made of Europa. NIMS also viewed the turbulent region of the atmosphere of Jupiter trailing the Great Red Spot, investigated hot spots in the clouds, and looked for aurorae in the south polar region of the giant planet.