http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18420570?GT1=9951

NASA shows off new views of Jupiter

New Horizons passed within 1.4 million miles of the planet earlier
this year

By Ker Than

Updated: 5:00 p.m. ET May 1, 2007

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 Tuesday 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.

A Jovian photo feast
Among the new images is one showing Jupiter's high-altitude clouds and
a haze at the planet's south pole probably formed by charged particles
transported there during one of the gas giant's auroras.

Another image provides the best picture yet of Jupiter's
charcoal-black rings. "Most people didn't realize Jupiter had rings.
When you say rings, most people think of Saturn," said New Horizons
scientist Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center. "By incredible
good luck, we happened to be at the right trajectory with the right
instruments to study these."

There are images capturing several simultaneous volcanic eruptions on
Jupiter's moon Io and one of a volcanic plume jettisoned up 200 miles
(320 kilometers) above the moon's surface. Another picture shows in
stunning detail Jupiter's Little Red Spot, a new storm system that is
smaller than the planet's famous Great Red Spot.

"It's sort of reminiscent of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' painting," said
Hal Weaver, a New Horizons project scientist at John Hopkins
University. "But this is the real deal. It's not in somebody's
imagination."

Stern's favorite image shows Jupiter's icy moon Europa rising above
the Jupiter cloud tops. The shot is one of many the spacecraft was
programmed to take for artistic, rather than scientific, purposes.

"I'd say if you haven't been to Jupiter yet, you have now, and New
Horizon has taken you there," Stern said.

More to come
New Horizon's images are providing scientists with a bounty of new
data to analyze, and there is still more to come. "We are only about
70 percent of the way through the playback," said John Spencer, New
Horizon's deputy lead researcher. "The data is still coming down every
morning. It's going to be kind of sad in a few weeks when we finally
stop getting this daily fix of new exciting stuff and we have to
actually sit down and write up our papers."

The Jupiter flyby came just 13 months after New Horizon's launch, and
was a dress rehearsal for its rendezvous with Pluto in 2015. The
instruments performed so well that the team will veer from its
original plan and prepare for the Pluto mission early.

"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.

"We've now proven what power this spacecraft's instrument suite has,
and now we're taking it out into the complete unknown, where
everything will be completely new and where it will be raining data in
2015," Stern said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18420570?GT1=9951

NASA shows off new views of Jupiter

New Horizons passed within 1.4 million miles of the planet earlier
this year

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18420570?GT1=9951

NASA shows off new views of Jupiter

New Horizons passed within 1.4 million miles of the planet earlier
this year

By Ker Than

Updated: 5:00 p.m. ET May 1, 2007

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 Tuesday 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."