I thought I'd start a new thread for this:

Jupiter Encounter Begins
January 10, 2007

I didn't realize encounter will be up to June.
Do you have material yet to open such a topic for Roseta that will fligh by Mars on feb 27th?
Exciting times once again...

New Horizons launched on Jan 19th 2006 and will fly past Jupiter on Feb 28th.

Comet McNaught pass the orbit of Jupiter about 10 days after the NH Launch - and will be on the way back out, crossing the orbit of Venus when NH makes it's closest approach to Jupiter.

I don't think there's much chance of a competative race on the way back out again though

Doug

Not a chance. McNaught is on a very slightly hyperbolic trajectory, but NH will be on a major solar escape trajectory after Jupiter. Poor comet doesn't stand a chance of catching up.

To Plutonian distances - McNaught is several years behind NH - quite something really.

Doug

How come NH is slowing down, now that it's approaching Jupiter? Its speed used to be 20+ km/s, but the last few weeks it's down to 19.9 km/s, and going slower by the day (currently 19.84 km/s). I'd think it would go faster and faster as it is pulled towards Jupiter.

The 'sphere of influence' for Jupiter hasn't been reached yet - the actual gravity assist period isn't very long.

Doug

Call it aphelium of the Hohmann orbit...
(ok, I've got some help from "The Basics of Spaceflight" for the orthograf, but what's wrong with that ?)

ehm..no Which aphelium? We're talking hyperbolic orbits here

Hahaha!


Bob Shaw

Hahaha !

NASA Spacecraft En Route to Pluto Prepares for Jupiter Encounter
RELEASE: 07-012
NASA/JHUAPL
January 18, 2007

Zooming to Pluto, New Horizons Closes in on Jupiter
January 18, 2007

Jupiter Flyby Press Kit (1.8 Mb PDF)

The Jupiter & Io LORRI photo caption mentions less turbulence in the Jovian Atmosphere than expected... can someone perhaps put Jupiters seasons in perspective, along with where in the Jovian year NH is vs. when Galileo was there?

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPho...piterAndIo.html

I didn't think Jupiter had seasons per se, since Jupiter (and its satellites) have only a negligible axial tilt. Jupiter's cloud belts and zones go through changes in albedo and amount of turbulence all the time, and I don't think they are tied to seasons. Compare images of Jupiter from the Pioneers, Voyagers, Hubble, Galileo, and now NH.

I made this page one year earlier, and could be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_Hori...ers/2006-Jan-24

Did anyone else watch the press conference? I was sitting in my living room waiting for it to show up on NASA TV, but NASA TV resolutely continued showing archival footage of Apollo 11 up to and past 10 am. I ran to the NASA website and discovered that the press conference was being carried not on their "Public channel" but on their "media channel" -- I guess they now have two channels, which may allow them to put out more stuff, but DirecTV doesn't carry their media channel! Fortunately I figured it out in time and got a good stream on the media channel to watch it on my computer. That was scary for a minute, though.

I've blogged the conference, but didn't mention one thing I found annoying -- a graphic showing New Horizons' speed through the encounter, which used only Imperial units. Of course American missions have to use Imperial units when they address the public, but it's irksome when they don't also include metric. I redrew the graphic with metric units, but didn't wind up using it for the blog, so I'll post it here.

--Emily

Helluva rollercoaster ride that.

Indeed...I guess New Horizons is now entering that part of the roller coaster ride that goes "tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick" up the first big hill...

--Emily

I think it would be better to be km/s. I can't read km/h for celestial bodies, can you?

I missed it totally ( hope spaceflightnow.com put it up soon ) - but read on the blog that John was kind enough to mention (although thankfully for slashdot like reasons, not by name) the contribution some members here made in finding some nice Kodak moments

Doug

I will point out that in the "NASA Gallery" segments on NASA-TV during overnights, they often replay recent press conferences. Sometimes over and over.

So, it's quite possible that those with access to NASA-TV will be able to catch the press conference at some point this evening (or in the wee hours of tomorrow morning) in replay.

-the other Doug

Here you go, a minute and a half from the conference of John Spencer acknowledging the amateurs, recorded with my cruddy little voice recorder. Enjoy.

--Emily

This happened to me.. I missed the first 8 minutes because I thought it had been canceled, then found the "media channel"

Umm... is there a link to the native resolution version of that cool Jupiter and Io image? What's the point of providing a magnified "hi-res" image like that? If one were writing a wish-list, I'd put lossless PNGs as well, but let's not get greedy here

That's the advantage of NOT been able to get NasaTV other than with my computer
I watched most of the conference and I liked it very much. People were both very present and quite relaxed, just enjoying the conference and the start of the fly by; very confident in the plans as well as in the spacecraft. I realized that quite a part of the encounter has been developped pretty late. Did I get correctly when Alan said that they'll push NH capabilies during Jupiter fly by even MORE than it'll be pushed when it'll get to Pluto?
Go NH, go ( )

In some senses, Alan said, they were pushing the spacecraft: they have twice as many observations planned for the Jupiter flyby as for their current straw-man Pluto plan (each observation may consist of multiple measurements). He said that based upon the spacecraft's performance, they may increase or reduce the number of observations at Pluto. However, there are some things they'll be doing at Pluto that they won't at Jupiter. For instance, the Pluto plan will have "retargetable" blocks, points in the science plan where the science team can optionally choose different observations, depending upon what they see during approach. They didn't have time to plan that sort of thing for Jupiter.

--Emily

It is on Spaceflightnow.com as a MOV now (I don't know what I'd do without my subscription to that place) - I wonder how many kodak hendric moments made it into the sequencing.

Doug

Is the date in Greenwich, NY, Texas or Pasadena 'units'

That's a good question. It would seem unlikely that such a graph would be anything but spacecraft time, which would be UT, but I don't actually know.

--Emily

That's interesting. Of course, Jupiter has already been the subject of six spacecrafts' imagery and is an easy target for HST, so for the most part, there wouldn't be the same call for change of plan -- a big Io eruption withstanding.

Making last-minute calls during the Pluto encounter could be a gritty affair. Given two alternatives, whatever you choose NOT to observe is going to remain unknown for a long time. Unlike the MERs, you can't sit still for an arbitrary amount of time and hash it out by committe. No pressure on the mission team, though!

Pluto Mission News
January 19, 2007
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu

Press Conference Replay

Missed the Jupiter flyby press conference on Jan. 18? Catch the replay this weekend on NASA TV! The event is scheduled to run on the NASA Media and Public channels at 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Eastern Time) on both Saturday and Sunday (Jan. 20-21).

Click here for video links and schedule information.

This is a question for someone from the New Horizons team (Mr. Stern?): Could you publish (pdf) a detailed Jupiter encounter timeline (e.g. which instrument does what at a specific time, spacecraft turns, SSR data volume etc.)? Like the preliminary encounter document posted here last summer. Your flyby press kit is, well, for the general press , but not very detailed in respect to the encounter sequence. Thank you.

Analyst

I enjoyed watching the press conference live. Lots of great info and insights. And it was quite a nice kudo to see the welcome mat for amateurs as they pointedly encouraged suggestions for "kodak moments" and other observations

Plus brand new images and animations, most of which are available here.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/0...essGraphics.htm

ken

Not to moan at a joyous time, but damn that luck of Callisto and Ganymede being on the opposite side of Jupiter! Callisto could have been a huge looming disc for NH, and it ended up being almost worst-case faraway instead!

That 2nd poster is very nice ... something for the store ?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/posters.php

I think we're using UT (and spacecraft time, not Earth received time which is 45 minutes later) in all our graphics unless otherwise stated.

John.

We should be posting all the images in JPEG format and native resolution on the NH web site in a few days- stay tuned!

Regarding making more observations at Jupiter than at Pluto, mostly it's just because we can- the Jupiter system is so much bigger so there's a longer period in which we can get useful data. But as Alan said, it's also a great way to push the system so we can expose and fix any weakenesses.

Finally, here's a recent timeline spreadsheet for you to chew on- this is one of our working documents for planning the encounter. It's not quite the final version- there have been a few timeline tweaks in the couple of weeks since this version- but it's pretty close. The data volumes and numbers of frames per observation are early estimates and shouldn't be relied on, but give some idea of what's planned.
Click to view attachment

Thank you so much John!! I'll see if I can produce a slimmed-down timeline to post on our website.

What are those Callirrhoe opnavs? Has New Horizons actually sighted its first non-Pluto KBO already?

--Emily

Callirrhoe is one of the newly discovered small outer satellites of Jupiter- we looked at it because it's about the same brightness as our KBO target is likely to be when we first pick it up on approach in 2019 or whenever. So it was a test of our ability to pick up a very faint moving target using long exposures.

A nice handfull of Kodak's - I'm really proud that UMSF was able to contribute in some tiny way - this will rank up there with the MOC Deimos observation in terms of wow factor.

Doug

I think these are Kodak moments where the time in MJD ties back to suggestions by hendric.

Line 031 54117.06319 Double shadow Transit
Line 034 54124.19514 Double shadow Transit
Line 110 54159.48961 IO Emerging from behind Jupiter
Line 143 54161.43332 Io/Europa conjunction
Line 165 54163.17200 Callisto emerging from behind Jupiter

Awesome. If I'm counting correctly the spreadsheet says these will take up 251Mbits of LORRI raw storage. Wow.

Line 110 54159.48961 IO Emerging from behind Jupiter
Click to view attachment


Line 143 54161.43332 Io/Europa conjunction
Click to view attachment


Line 165 54163.17200 Callisto emerging from behind Jupiter
Click to view attachment

These shots represent around 0.5% of the total data return for the mission (in terms of bits of data returned). If you were to price all the bits returned by the mission equally then you could argue that these shots are worth around $30 million for the set.

I take it we're going to be getting high quality prints and expensive frames for them then?.

I'll sell you all of the black pixels now for only $300.

A brief word to all the NH lurkers on UMSF:

Keep up the good work! We're with you...

And post them images real soon now, OK?


Bob Shaw

I hope those Kodak moments come out well; I'm not sure how well the models show the edge of Jupiter's atmosphere. Seeing the refraction of the moons through the atmosphere will be pretty cool though!

Seeing the images starting to come in from this flyby has me missing Galileo...Jupiter, to me, is the most photogenic place in the solar system, with its dynamic weather and unique moons.

I know we send probes for science, and to answer questions, but I feel that visiting beautiful places is always a worthwhile endeavor.

Thank you very much for the timeline, John.

Analyst

How will the Jupiter flyby affect the speed of New Horizons?
Will it really become the fastest traveling spacecraft ever?

No.

The solar probe Helios 2 was the fastest travelling spacecraft ever, at about 69 km/s relative to the Sun. I do not think any outer solar system probes in near future could have a higher speed.

That's true but Helios remains in orbit around the Sun so despite having an exceptionally high sun relative velocity at perihelion it does not have enough oribital energy to leave the solar system. In that sense it is not as "fast" as NH which is on an escape trajectory (or will be once it gets that boost from Jupiter).