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New Horizons in Sight! Photos Come Back from Space Probe
A space probe bound for Pluto just sent back photos of the planet Jupiter. The NASA probe, named New Horizons, was launched in January of 2006. New Horizons is the first mission to Pluto, the fastest spacecraft ever launched from earth, and will be the farthest distance a spacecraft has traveled to begin its primary mission.
The probe is about the size of a grand piano and weighs 1,000 pounds. It was launched on an Atlas IV rocket. Since New Horizons passed Jupiter this week, the probe was able to send back picture of Jupiter's moons. The first pictures arrived on February 26th. Those pictures were of the moon Io.
New Horizons was over 1.5 million miles away when it took the pictures of Io. The resolution of the photo was 7.4 miles per pixel. Even from that distance, you can see a giant plume of ash rising 180 miles above the surface of Io.
The plume of ash is from an eruption of the volcano Tvashtar. The moon is covered with volcanoes. New Horizons also sent back pictures of two other moons, Ganymede and Europa. Ganymede is Jupiter's biggest moon. Europa is about the size of Earth's moon and is thought to have water on or near its icy surface. Some wonder if Europa might even have some form of life.
After swinging by Jupiter, New Horizons is traveling towards Pluto at 52,000 miles per hour. But even at that speed it will take until the year 2015 for the probe to reach its ultimate destination.
I'm Adelbert and that's what happened in science this week!
Did you catch all that or did you space out? Let's find out by playing this week's Just the Facts game!
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