01.18.2007
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| This image was taken on Jan. 8, 2007, with the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, while the spacecraft was about about 50 million miles from Jupiter. Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is to the right; the planet's Great Red Spot is also visible. |
Just a year after it was dispatched on the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the New Horizons spacecraft is about to swing past Jupiter and pick up even more speed on its voyage toward the unexplored regions of the planetary frontier.
The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons will make its closest pass to Jupiter on Feb. 28, threading its path through an "aim point" 1.4 million miles from the center of Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity will accelerate New Horizons away from the Sun by an additional 9,000 miles per hour - half the speed of a space shuttle in orbit - pushing it past 52,000 mph and hurling it toward a pass through the Pluto system in July 2015.
At the same time, the New Horizons mission team is taking the spacecraft on the ultimate test drive - using the flyby to put the probe's systems and seven science instruments through the paces of a planetary encounter. More than 700 observations of Jupiter and its four largest moons are planned from January through June, including scans of Jupiter's turbulent, stormy atmosphere and dynamic magnetosphere; the most detailed survey yet of its gossamer ring system; maps of the composition and topography of the large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto; and an unprecedented look at volcanic activity on Io.
The flight plan also calls for the first-ever trip down the long "tail" of Jupiter's magnetosphere, a wide stream of charged particles that extends tens of millions of miles beyond the planet, and the first close-up look at the "Little Red Spot," a nascent storm south of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot.
"Our highest priority is to get the spacecraft safely through the gravity assist and on its way to Pluto," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO. "But we also have an incredible opportunity to conduct a real-world-encounter stress test to wring out our procedures and techniques for Pluto, and to collect some valuable science data."
The Jupiter test matches or exceeds the mission's Pluto study in duration, data volume sent back to Earth, and operational intensity. Much of the data from the Jupiter flyby won't be sent back to Earth until after closest approach, because the spacecraft's main priority is to observe the planet and store data on its recorders before transmitting information home.
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