Out Of This World
NASA has released some absolutely stunning images taken by the New Horizons probe during its flyby of the Jupiter system in February. Scientists are very pleased with the performance of the probe thus far.
New images beamed back by a NASA spacecraft that flew by Jupiter earlier this year are giving scientists their most detailed glimpse yet of the gas giant and its moons.
On Feb. 28, New Horizons passed within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) of Jupiter as part of a slingshot maneuver to give it a speed boost as it races toward its main target Pluto. During the move, the spacecraft snapped hundreds of images of the Jupiter system.
Some of those images, unveiled today during a NASA news conference, reveal never-before-seen features of the planet and its moons. New Horizon's principal investigator, Alan Stern, said New Horizon's Jupiter flyby was "successful beyond our wildest dreams."
"This is the eighth mission to Jupiter, and it gives us a chance for the first time to take these modern instruments in close where Cassini couldn't go and with the bandwidth that Galileo couldn't deliver to really unveil new views of the system," Stern said.
Things are going so well, that NASA has altered plans for the New Horizons to hibernate for a portion of the journey:
"We've really learned how to drive this spacecraft," Stern said. "The people that did the Jupiter encounter are now charged in the coming year and a half with designing and writing all the code for the spacecraft to execute during its Pluto encounter."
The original plan was to put New Horizon into hibernation for several years after the Jupiter flyby before waking it again to prepare for Pluto. "We've instead decided that the team is so expert now and they're at the peak of their performance that we're going to be designing and writing all the code in '07 and '08 and doing our first rehearsal of the Pluto encounter in 2009," Stern said.
New Horizons is currently hurtling away from the Sun and Earth at 52,000 miles per hour (83,600 kph), making it the fastest NASA mission ever launched. It is currently 100 million miles beyond Jupiter and more than half a trillion miles from the Sun.
The image of Europa rising over the horizon of Jupiter makes great wallpaper for your computer. I know that for a fact!
By The Anchoress, Wednesday, 2 May , 2007 @ 2:54 pm
Stunning pictures - some of them remind me of Vincent Van Gogh.