New Horizons provides close-up of the Jupiter system

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 May 2007 11:17

Science - Space

The latest images of Jupiter and its moons sent back by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show remarkable signs of activity.

A massive volcanic eruption is visible on Io, Jupiter's rings show signs of a recent impact by a small object, and scientists got their first close-up look at the Little Red Spot.

Formed during the last decade by the merger of three smaller storms, the Little Red Spot is around half the size of the Great Red Spot, yet still some 70 percent of Earth's diameter. "This is our best look ever of a storm like this in its infancy," said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Although the fly-by took place during late February/early March, the limited bandwidth between the craft and Earth stations means the data is still flowing. In all, 34G of data is expected.

The slingshot effect from the fly-by takes three years off the journey to Pluto, and has provided researchers with a 'dress rehearsal' for the craft's arrival at what most people still regard as the solar system's outermost planet (ignoring its 2006 reclassification as a minor planet by the IAU).

"Aside from setting up our 2015 arrival at Pluto, the Jupiter flyby was a stress test of our spacecraft and team, and both passed with very high marks," said Alan Stern, Science Mission Directorate associate administrator and New Horizons principal investigator at NASA headquarters. "We'll be analyzing this data for months to come; we have collected spectacular scientific products as well as evocative images."

A gallery of recent images and graphics is available on the New Horizons web site.