At 7:35 a.m. Voyager was scheduled to pass through the flux tube of Io, the region in which tremendous electric currents were calculated to be flowing back and forth between the satellite and Jupiter. Norm Ness suggested, after examining magnetometer data, that Voyager skirted the edge of the flux tube, and that the current in the tube was about one million amps. As the flux tube results were received, champagne bottles began to pop in the particles and fields science offices, in celebration of the successful passage through the inner magnetosphere. Meanwhile, at 7:47 a.m., closest approach to Io occurred, at a range of only 22 000 kilometers. Voyager was 25 000 times closer to this satellite than were the watchers on Earth. At 8:14 a.m., while still within 30 000 kilometers of Io, the spacecraft passed out of sight behind the edge of Jupiter. All scientific data for the next two hours and six minutes were stored on the onboard tape recorder for later transmission to Earth. Meanwhile, the radio communication signal was used to probe the atmosphere of Jupiter, yielding a profile of electron density in the ionosphere and of the gas pressure and temperature in the upper atmosphere. While out of sight from Earth, at 9:07 a.m., Voyager plunged into the shadow of Jupiter. As the Sun set on the spacecraft, the ultraviolet instrument used the absorption of sunlight to determine the composition and temperature of the upper atmosphere. In the darkness, the infrared IRIS measured the night-side temperatures of the planet, and long-exposure images were taken to search for aurora, lightning, and fireballs in the Jovian atmosphere. At 10:20 a.m., Voyager reappeared from behind Jupiter and radio contact was restored; at 11:24 a.m., it emerged from shadow into sunlight, speeding on toward encounter with Ganymede. At 8 a.m. a special press conference was held to mark the successful Jupiter flyby. Noel Hinners, Associate Administrator for Space Science and the highest ranking NASA official present, congratulated all those who had made the Voyager Mission a success. The encounter was the “culmination of a fantastic amount of dedication and effort. The result is a spectacular feat of technology and a beginning of a new era of science for the solar system. Just watching the data come in has been fantastic. I had a fear that things on the satellites were going to look like the lunar highlands. Nature wins again. If we’re going to see exploration of this nature occurring in the 1980s and 1990s we must continue to expound the results of what we’re finding here, the role of exploration in the history of our country, what it means to us as a vigorous national society.”