May 1 2007
From The Space Library
NASA released images that its New Horizons spacecraft had captured 28 February 2007, when the craft passed within 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) of Jupiter on its way to Pluto. The images provided “never-before-seen perspectives” of the giant planet’s atmosphere, rings, moons, and magnetosphere, including the first close-up scans of Jupiter’s second-largest storm Little Red Spot, which had formed during the previous decade when three smaller storms merged. Harold A. Weaver Jr., New Horizons Project Scientist for the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, remarked that the image was “the best look ever of a storm like this in its infancy.” New Horizons had also captured the clearest images to date of the tenuous Jovian ring system, including images revealing a series of unexpected arcs and clumps of dust in the system, indicating that a small object had recently impacted the ring. In addition, NASA had compiled movies using the images, creating an unprecedented view of ring dynamics. Jeffrey Moore, New Horizons Jupiter Encounter Science Team Leader, commented that the new images enabled scientists to view the rapid evolution of Jupiter’s rings, detecting changes within weeks and months. Scientists had already made similar observations of Saturn’s rings. The New Horizons spacecraft had launched in January 2006.
NASA, “Pluto-Bound New Horizons Provides New Look at Jupiter System,” news release 07-95, 1 May 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/may/HQ_07095_Pluto.html (accessed 24 March 2010); Agence France- Presse, “Jupiter’s Moons Shepherd Dust Through Wings: NASA,” 2 May 2007.
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