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Galileo is preparing for its upcoming flyby of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, which will take place Sun., January 31, at 6:20 p.m. Pacific time, at an altitude of 1,440 kilometers (895 miles). This will be the last Europa flyby of the current Galileo Europa Mission.

The spacecraft is "clearing the decks" by transmitting to Earth the final batch of science pictures and information stored previously on Galileo's onboard tape recorder. This week's transmission includes a spacecraft camera observation of Jupiter's rings, a measurement of the star Sirius by the near- infrared mapping spectrometer, and part of a recording made of Jupiter's plasma sheet by instruments that study magnetic fields and charged particles.

Galileo will also perform a minor flight path correction on Thursday, January 28, and will perform regular tape recorder maintenance on Friday, January 29, both in preparation for the Europa flyby.