The rocket carrying New Horizons takes off last year. Photograph: Terry Renna/AP
A Nasa spacecraft on its way to investigate Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is making a useful pitstop/pass at the solar system's biggest planet. New Horizons, which took off from Cape Canaveral last January, has now reached Jupiter, according to this from Science Daily:
The New Horizons mission team will use the flyby to put the probe's systems and seven science instruments through the paces of more than 700 observations of Jupiter and its four largest moons. The planned observations from January through June include scans of Jupiter's turbulent, stormy atmosphere; a detailed survey of its ring system; and a detailed study of Jupiter's 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, and the first close-up look at the "Little Red Spot," a nascent storm south of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot.
However, the most important reason for passing by Jupiter is to get a little bit of speed up: using the planet's gravity to shoot New Horizons even faster into the depths of the system - to an incredible 52,000 miles an hour.
However, even at that rate, it's still going to take some time for the ship to reach Pluto - which, of course, isn't even a planet any more. It doesn't get to that particular KBO until July 2015.
