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NASA, Jupiter, Pluto

New Horizons Jovian Visit



Just like when you go on holiday somewhere, there are always great sights along the way. Rarely do we just keep our heads down in the car. The same can be said for the New Horizons mission, currently en route for the newly christened dwarf planet Pluto and its three moons, Charon, Nix and Hydra

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As New Horizons made its way past Jupiter in the early half of this year--using the gravitational pull of the planet to shave three years off its journey--it was able to take detailed scans and imaging of our solar system's largest planet. New Horizons passed Jupiter on February 28 of this year, and had already been studying the planet since early January on its approach. And despite the fact that it was the eighth spacecraft to visit Jupiter, New Horizons was on a trajectory that allowed it to view aspects of the planet never seen before. "The Jupiter encounter was successful beyond our wildest dreams," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of NASA Headquarters, Washington. "Not only did it prove out our spacecraft and put it on course to reach Pluto in 2015, it was a chance for us to take sophisticated instruments to places in the Jovian system where other spacecraft couldn't go, and to return important data that adds tremendously to our understanding of the solar system's largest planet and its moons, rings and atmosphere." The New Horizon flyby at its closest came within 3 gigameters of the planet and made important discoveries focusing on Jovian weather. Heat-induced lightning strikes were found occurring in Jupiter's Polar Regions, the first polar strikes observed anywhere else other than earth. New Horizon also made the single most detailed analysis of waves that traverse the entire width of the planet. These waves indicate the presence of massive storms below the levels of ammonia that make up the clouds obscuring much of Jupiter's surface. Moving away from the major planet itself, the New Horizon mission was able to take some of the clearest images of the ring system. Scientists spotted debris masses that could either be the result of a recent impact, or of some other phenomenon. The ring dynamics were also focused upon, and found that two of Jupiter's smaller moons--Metis and Adrastea--shepherding the materials around the rings. Due to New Horizon's primary purpose for visiting Jupiter--a gravitational speed bump--it was out of range to properly focus on the Jovian moons. However, as it is designed to focus on dim targets, the teams were able to acquire some data from Jupiter's four largest moons. The closest of them to Jupiter--Io--was the primary focus, with its heavy volcanic surface drawing scientist's attentions. In its study, New Horizon located 11 different volcanic plumes of differing sizes, including one that erupted 200 miles in to the air. This latter plume--erupting from Tvashtar--gave scientists the chance to witness what happened when the plume reached the higher altitudes, prior to falling back down. Since Galileo's visit to Io back in 2001, New Horizons spotted 20 geological changes to the small moon, ensuring that it continues to go down in the records as the most active body in the solar system. Already well on its way towards Pluto now, New Horizon will pass by Saturn's orbit middle of 2008, Uranus' orbit in 2011, and past Neptune's orbit in 2014, a year before reaching Pluto. On approach to Pluto, six months in advance to reaching its destination, New Horizon will begin observations. Circumstances permitting, the New Horizons mission will continue on past Pluto's observations are conducted, on to the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper belt is essentially an asteroid belt--like the one between Mars and Jupiter--but substantially larger, at 20 times as wide and 20-200 times as massive. It consists of many small bodies known as KBO's (Kuiper belt objects). However, due to the length of the mission and distance to earth, any observation will be minimal. Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.


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Guest Column Joshua Hill -- Bio and Archives

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