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Posted by baalke on February 26, 2007, 4:37 pm
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http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspectives/piPerspective_current.php
The PI's Perspective
Picking up the Pace
Alan Stern
February 26, 2007
We're in the thick of it at Jupiter now! Since early on Saturday,
February 24, New Horizons has been executing its Jupiter close
approach
sequence, which contains 15 to 20 observations per day. Recall this is
almost 10 times more than what we were doing just a week earlier!
Here on the ground we aren't yet seeing much science data, but the
engineering data we're getting shows the encounter is progressing
nominally and the various observations are coming off right on
schedule.
What's next? Today, we're studying atmospheric composition and
structure
of both Io and Callisto, mapping the surface compositions of Ganymede
and Europa, searching for embedded moonlets in Jupiter's rings,
obtaining high-resolution images of the Little Red Spot on Jupiter,
imaging Io's volcanic plumes, and obtaining ring images to study the
phase-angle behavior of their dust. We're also sending home eight
hours
of downlink data. All the while, we're studying Jupiter's
magnetosphere.
By late tomorrow we'll be at closest approach, but there are still
twice
as many observations tomorrow as we're making today!
Before I close for today, I was recently asked to say something about
what became of the now-derelict Boeing STAR-48 upper stage that
boosted
us onto our Jupiter trajectory. Well, the last anyone saw of it was on
launch day, January 19, 2006. As a result, its trajectory isn't nearly
as well known as the path of New Horizons, but we do know it will make
its closest approach to Jupiter on Tuesday, February 27, about six or
so
hours before New Horizons does. Moreover, we know that our upper stage
is headed to an aim point almost half a million kilometers farther
from
Jupiter than New Horizons. As a result of these "errors" in its
trajectory, our third stage will miss Pluto in 2015 by about 200
million
kilometers - which is about as far as the average distance from the
Sun
to Mars!
I'll be back with more news and views soon. Keep exploring, as we do!
[Image]
Jupiter's Little Red Spot - a nascent storm marked by the blue box in
this New Horizons image taken last month - is among the New Horizons
observation targets during this week's close approach sequence.
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Posted by Chase Preuninger on February 26, 2007, 7:01 pm
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That third stage thing is really cool!
http://groups.google.com/group/neat-astronomy?hl=en
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