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Rosetta teams up with New Horizons

2 March 2007

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Although the main mission of NASA's New Horizons is to explore the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt of icy, rocky objects, the spacecraft first flew by the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, on 28 February 2007 — just a little over a year after launch. In this artist's rendering, New Horizons soars past Jupiter as the volcanic moon Io passes between the spacecraft and planet.

Credits: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)

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A drawing of space near Jupiter, showing a portion of the radiation belts (in red), the Io torus (green) and the Europa torus (blue). The blue and green belts come from the atmospheres of the moons Europa and Io.

In a coordinated observation campaign started at the end of February 2007, ESA's Rosetta and NASA's New Horizon spacecraft are studying Jupiter's space environment, while travelling on their way to their respective destinations - comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and the Pluto system.

The picture comes from measurements taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

Credits: NASA

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This image of Jupiter is produced from a 2x2 mosaic of photos taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and assembled by the LORRI team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The telescopic camera snapped the images during a 3-minute, 35-second span on February 10, when the spacecraft was 29 million kilometres from Jupiter. At this distance, Jupiter's diameter was 1,015 LORRI pixels - nearly filling the imager's entire (1,024-by-1,024 pixel) field of view. Features as small as 290 kilometers are visible.

Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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During the course of its journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta is making use of several gravitational ‘kicks’: one at Mars on 25 February 2007 (250 km distance) and three at Earth: 4 March 2005 (1995 km distance), 13 November 2007 (5301 km distance) and 13 November 2009 (2500 km distance). Manoeuvres to correct Rosetta's orbit take place before and after each swing-by.

Credits: ESA, image by C.Carreau

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