Nasa Notes
... Jim Timmons

THE FINAL FIX (Galileo) - Once again the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab was able to repair a damaged item on the Galileo spacecraft.  This long distance fix will permit the transmission of data obtained during Galileo's November pass by Jupiter's inner moon, Amalthea. This last pass before impact with Jupiter next September took Galileo twice as close to Jupiter as it had before.  This orbit exposed the spacecraft to the strongest radiation of the mission with proton exposure more than the rest of the mission combined. A damaged diode that helps control the tape motor drive received over 83 hours of treatment to repair the damage enough to allow tape playback. Playback will continue until mid January when mission operations are scheduled to end.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH (JSC Aircraft) -  The Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston has extended a contract with a local firm for the maintenance and modification of JSC aircraft. The DynCorp Technical Services of Fort Worth will continue to service till February of 2004 JSC aircraft at Ellington Field, El Paso, Edwards AFB, Kennedy Space Center and the Langley Research Center.

FWAS's own Jessica Ray's painting, sculpture, and poetry was on exhibit at the Soho Fort Worth Art Gallery from Dec 7 though December 31.  The gallery, located at 1632 Park Place, had their main exhibit area filled with Jessica's art, which is a unique blend of beauty and science. 

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away by it but it was nice to see one again. It is hard to beat that double shadow transit the other night.

I also got out the ole lunar filter and looked at the Moon. I think Copernicus looks just as cool at full moon as it does when the terminator is nearby. When the terminator is nearby you can see the terraced walls and all sorts of rugged terrain but when the moon is full the area around Copernicus looks like a big ole SPLAT!

While watching the double shadow transit last night at 166X, Io seemed to occult Ganymede which was way behind it. Ganymede had recently emerged from being occulted by Jupiter and Io was approaching it's transit ingress. There was a couple of minutes maybe during which there was no "apparent" gap between them. Did anybody else see this?

I checked the schedule for mutual events in the December issue of Sky and Tel but it was not listed. The seeing was not perfect, but pretty darn good. That might explain it. My optics are not perfect, of course. That could explain it. This would have been about 1:40 AM.