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May
1, 2007: Today NASA released stunning new images
of Jupiter and its moons taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.
Views include a movie of a volcanic eruption on Jupiter's
moon Io; a nighttime shot of auroras and lava on Io; a color
photo of the "Little Red Spot" churning in Jupiter's
cloudtops; images of small moons herding dust and boulders
through Jupiter's faint rings--and much more: gallery.
 "We'll
be analyzing these data for months to come," says Science
Mission Directorate Associate Administrator and New Horizons
Principal Investigator Alan Stern of NASA Headquarters. "We
have collected spectacular scientific products as well as
evocative images."
Right:
Europa rising over the clouds of Jupiter. The picture was
one of a handful of the Jupiter system that New Horizons took
primarily for artistic, rather than scientific, value. [More]
New
Horizons came within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on Feb.
28 in a gravity assist maneuver designed to trim three years
off its travel time to Pluto. For several weeks before and
after this closest approach, the piano-sized robotic probe
trained its seven cameras and sensors on Jupiter and its four
largest moons, storing data from nearly 700 observations on
its digital recorders and gradually sending that information
back to Earth. About 70 percent of the expected 34 gigabits
of data has come back so far, radioed to NASA's largest antennas
over more than 600 million miles.
This
activity confirmed the successful testing of the instruments
and operating software the spacecraft will use at Pluto. "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," adds Stern.
A
highlight of the flyby was the first close-up color scan of
the Little Red Spot:
Above:
Jupiter's "Little Red Spot." Credit: New Horizons.
[More]
This
storm is about half the size of Jupiter's larger Great Red
Spot and about 70 percent of Earth's diameter. It formed in
the late 1990s when three smaller storms collided and merged.
The combined storm started out white, but began turning red
about a year ago. Using New Horizons data, scientists will
be able to search for clues about how these great storm systems
form and why they change colors.
"This
is our best look ever at a storm like this in its infancy,"
said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel,
Md. APL built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.
Under
a range of lighting and viewing angles, New Horizons also
grabbed the clearest images ever of the tenuous Jovian ring
system. In them, scientists spotted a series of unexpected
arcs and clumps of dust, indicative of a recent impact into
the ring by a small object.
 Right:
Well-defined lanes of gravel- to boulder-sized material in
Jupiter's charcoal black rings. Credit: New Horizons. [More]
Movies
made from New Horizons images also provide an unprecedented
look at ring dynamics, with the tiny inner moons Metis and
Adrastea appearing to shepherd the materials around the rings.
(Scroll to the middle of this
page to see the movies.)
"We're
starting to see that rings can evolve rapidly, with changes
detectable during weeks and months," said Jeff Moore,
New Horizons Jupiter Encounter science team lead from NASA
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We've seen
similar phenomena in the rings of Saturn."
Of
Jupiter's four largest moons, the team focused much attention
on volcanic Io, the most geologically active body in the solar
system. New Horizons' cameras captured pockets of bright,
glowing lava scattered across the surface; dozens of small,
glowing spots of gas; and several fortuitous views of a sunlit
umbrella-shaped dust plume rising 200 miles into space from
the volcano Tvashtar, the best images yet of a giant eruption
from the tortured volcanic moon.
Above:
Io at night. Visible in the image are volcanic hot spots and
an auroral glow, produced as intense radiation from Jupiter's
magnetosphere bombards Io's atmosphere. Credit New Horizons.
[More]
The
timing and location of the spacecraft's trajectory also allowed
it to spy many of the mysterious, circular troughs carved
onto the icy moon Europa. Data on the size, depth and distribution
of these troughs, discovered by the Jupiter-orbiting Galileo
mission, will help scientists determine the thickness of the
ice shell that covers Europa's global ocean.
Already
the fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons reached
Jupiter 13 months after lifting off from Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station, Fla., in January 2006. The flyby added 9,000
miles per hour, pushing the velocity of New Horizons past
50,000 miles per hour and setting up a flight by Pluto in
July 2015.
Right:
The Tvashtar volcano on Io. Click
here to view a two-frame movie of the plume in action.
[More]
 The
number of observations at Jupiter was actually twice that
of those planned at Pluto. New Horizons made most of these
observations during the spacecraft's closest approach to the
planet, which was guided by more than 40,000 separate commands
in the onboard computer.
"We
can run simulations and take test images of stars, and learn
that things would probably work fine at Pluto," said
John Spencer, deputy lead of the New Horizons Jupiter Encounter
Science Team, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
"But having a planet to look at and lots of data to dig
into tells us that the spacecraft and team can do all these
amazing things. We might not have explored the full capabilities
of the spacecraft if we didn't have this real planetary flyby
to push the system and get our imaginations going."
There's
more to come: New Horizons is making an unprecedented flight
down Jupiter's long magnetotail, where it will analyze the
intensities of sun-charged particles that flow hundreds of
millions of miles beyond the giant planet. Stay tuned!
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New Horizons is the first mission
in NASA's New Frontiers Program of medium-class spacecraft
exploration projects. The Discovery and New Frontiers Program
Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the
New Frontiers Program for NASA Headquarters. The JHU Applied
Physics Laboratory manages the New Horizons mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate.
Source: NASA press release | Production Editor:
Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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