May 1, 2007

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1726

Michael Buckley
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
240-228-7536 

RELEASE: 07-95

PLUTO-BOUND NEW HORIZONS PROVIDES NEW LOOK AT JUPITER SYSTEM

WASHINGTON - NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has provided new data on 
the Jupiter system, stunning scientists with never-before-seen 
perspectives of the giant planet's atmosphere, rings, moons and 
magnetosphere.

These new views include the closest look yet at the Earth-sized 
"Little Red Spot" storm churning materials through Jupiter's cloud 
tops; detailed images of small satellites herding dust and boulders 
through Jupiter's faint rings; and of volcanic eruptions and circular 
grooves on the planet's largest moons.

New Horizons came to within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on Feb. 28, 
using the planet's gravity to trim three years from 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," said Science Mission Directorate Associate 
Administrator and New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, 
NASA Headquarters, Washington. "We'll be analyzing this data for 
months to come; we have collected spectacular scientific products as 
well as evocative images."

Images include the first close-up scans of the Little Red Spot, 
Jupiter's second-largest storm, which formed when three smaller 
storms merged during the past decade. The storm, about half the size 
of Jupiter's larger Great Red Spot and about 70 percent of Earth's 
diameter, began turning red about a year before New Horizons flew 
past it. Scientists will search for clues about how these systems 
form and why they change colors in their close observations of 
materials spinning within and around the nascent storm.

"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 (APL), Laurel, Md. APL built 
and operates the New Horizons spacecraft. "Combined with data from 
telescopes on and around Earth taken at the same time New Horizons 
sped past Jupiter, we're getting an incredible look at the dynamics 
of weather on giant planets."

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. 
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.

"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. 

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 New Horizons past 50,000 miles per hour and setting up a 
flight by Pluto in July 2015. 

The number of observations at Jupiter was 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."

More data are to come, as New Horizons completes its 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.

New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program of 
medium-class spacecraft exploration projects. Stern leads the mission 
and science team as principal investigator; APL manages the mission 
for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The mission team also 
includes Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder, Colo; the Boeing Company, 
Chicago; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.;NASA's 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Stanford University, 
Palo Alto, Calif.; KinetX, Inc., Simi Valley, Calif.; Lockheed Martin 
Corp.; Denver; University of Colorado, Boulder; the U.S. Department 
of Energy, Washington; and a number of other firms, NASA centers, and 
university partners.

To view the new images visit:

www.nasa.gov/newhorizons 

	
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