Astronomy Down Under

New Horizon flies by Jupiter

28 Feb at 15:40 by Wilson

As I write this, the New Horizons probe is less than 5 minutes away from its closest approach to Jupiter, on its way to Pluto. It is using Jupiter’s gravitational pull to gain speed, which will allow it to get to Pluto much earlier than it would normally. Still, it will take 8 more years to get there: the closest approach to Pluto will happen on 14 July 2015 (Bastille Day).

New Horizons was launched just over one year ago, on 19 January 2006, and the fact that it made it to Jupiter in less than 14 months is a good demonstration of how fast this probe is (and the fact that the trip to Pluto will still take almost 10 years is a good demonstration of how large our solar system is…). The gravity-assist manoeuvre around Jupiter is accelerating it to over 83,000 km/h (from just under 70,000) and will send it flying through Jupiter’s magnetosphere “tail”, the result of the interaction between the solar wind and Jupiter’s magnetic field; New Horizons will be the first probe ever to fly through this area, and the data it sends back should be interesting.

After that (from June onwards, probably) the probe will mostly hibernate until it meets Pluto, as there is nothing really interesting on the way there. Jupiter data should start appearing in New Horizon’s web site soon, and you can use the same web site to follow the probe’s progress through the outer solar system.