mmcirvin | New Horizons at Jupiter (Reply)

Over the next few days, the New Horizons probe will be making a close pass by Jupiter to pick up some kinetic energy for its trip to Pluto (which it will encounter in 2015, with planned subsequent adventures further into the Kuiper Belt). It will be observing Jupiter and its moons in the process, both as a systems shakedown and for inherent scientific interest. The 1990s Galileo Jupiter orbiter's jammed main antenna meant that it couldn't return as much data as planned, so every time a probe gets a kick from Jupiter on the way to somewhere else, the opportunity to do science there is particularly precious--Cassini returned more pictures of Jupiter during its brief flyby on the way to Saturn than Galileo did during its whole mission.

The New Horizons homepage at Johns Hopkins is currently dominated by an irritating, jokey "trailer" for the mission, but you can read about the plans for Jupiter science here and see the latest released images from the LORRI camera here. It looks as if they haven't updated that last page in a couple of weeks; LORRI should be getting much better pictures of Jupiter as I write. I hope they'll have some more up soon after the flyby.