Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: NEW HORIZONS' JOVIAN FLYBY

by Hazed

It's not just Rosetta that has been having a close encounter with another planet. NASA's spacecraft New Horizons has just flown past the giant planet Jupiter.

New Horizons was launched just over a year go, and is on its way to Pluto and its moons. The point of this flyby was partly to test the probe's instruments, but also to take advantage of Jupiter's gravity to increase the probe's speed. It's now hurtling towards Pluto at 52,000 mph. This speed boost will cut three years off the travel time - but even so, it's not scheduled to arrive at its destination until 2015.

The flyby provided the first close-up look at Jupiter and its moons since the Galileo mission back in 1995. The next scheduled visit will be NASA's Juno system in 2016.

For more information and to see a picture of Io, go to the New Horizons website.

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