NASA Spacecraft Nears Jupiter Encounter

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft — the fastest ever launched — is rapidly approaching the solar system’s largest planet, en route to Pluto and beyond.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s New Horizons will make its closest pass to Jupiter Feb. 28. Jupiter’s gravity will then accelerate New Horizons by an additional 9,000 mph, pushing it past 52,000 mph and hurling it toward a July 2015 transit of the Pluto system.

The New Horizons mission team will use the Jupiter flyby to test the spacecraft’s seven science instruments by taking more than 700 observations of Jupiter and its four largest moons.

The spacecraft also will take the first-ever trip down the long tail of Jupiter’s magnetosphere — a wide stream of charged particles that extends tens of millions of miles beyond the planet. It will also make the first close-up images of Jupiter’s Little Red Spot, a nascent storm south of Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot.

Much of the data will not be sent back to Earth until early March, after the spacecraft’s closest approach to the planet.