Galileo Images a Boost to Odetics

The stunning pictures of one of Jupiter’s moons delivered by the spacecraft Galileo last week brought particular satisfaction, as well as a measure of redemption, to the employees of Odetics Inc. in Anaheim.

The company built a data tape recorder installed on Galileo that was crucial in delivering pictures of the icy moon Ganymede back to Earth. But the device was never expected to play such a key role and was heaped with scorn when it malfunctioned last October, threatening the success of the spacecraft’s mission.

“We’re delighted that something that was maligned and that we were not feeling good about has enabled us to get these high-resolution images,” said Jerry Muench, vice president of marketing at Odetics.

The device is a mechanical tape recorder sealed inside a black box not much bigger than a loaf of bread. It was designed to record all sorts of data, ranging from images to temperature readings, and, most important, to operate maintenance-free for years in stressful environments. The Galileo, after all, was launched in 1989 and its mission is not yet over.

The Odetics recorder became crucial to the mission when a high-powered Galileo antenna, which was to transmit pictures and readings directly to Earth, failed to unfurl in 1991. As a result, the data had to be recorded temporarily on the spacecraft so that a lower-powered backup antenna could relay the information home piece by piece, a much slower process.

Then, last October, just as Galileo was approaching Jupiter, the recorder got stuck in rewind mode, hampering the spacecraft’s ability to collect and send back data. After some tense moments, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena figured out a way to get the recorder working again, although a portion of tape had to be sacrificed.

“Now the recorder is working in beautiful order,” said Juli Merkovsky, a spokeswoman for Odetics. “Everything looks good. That’s why we’re so pleased and proud.”

Some of the images from the Galileo mission can be viewed on the Internet at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/index.html.

Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com.