Feb 28 2007
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its New Horizons spacecraft, en route to Pluto and the unexplored Kuiper Belt region, had successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter. NASA stated that New Horizons, designed as the fastest spacecraft ever launched, had gained nearly 9,000 miles per hour (14,484 kilometers per hour) from Jupiter’s gravity, accelerating the craft to more than 52,000 miles per hour (83,685 kilometers per hour). Covering approximately 500 million miles (805 million kilometers) since its launch in January 2006, the craft had reached Jupiter more quickly than any of the seven previous spacecraft to visit the planet. New Horizon’s successful flyby confirmed that the craft was on track to travel 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) and to reach the Pluto system in July 2015. Moreover, during the Jupiter encounter, the craft had conducted portions of an intense six-month-long systems check, including more than 700 scientific observations of the Jupiter system. New Horizons Principal Investigator S. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, described these checks as a purposely designed “tough test for the mission team” and for the spacecraft.
NASA, “NASA Spacecraft Gets Boost from Jupiter for Pluto Encounter,” news release 07-55, 28 February 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/feb/HQ_07055_New_Horizons_Jupiter_Flyby.html (accessed 14 October 2009).
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