Although the main mission of New Horizons is to explore the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt of icy, rocky objects, the spacecraft will first fly by the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, early 2007 — just a little over a year after launch. In this artist's rendering, New Horizons is just past its closest approach to the planet, on Feb. 28, 2007. Near the Sun are Earth, Venus and Mercury. The dim crescent shape at the upper right of the Sun is Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's four largest moons. Just left of Jupiter is the icy moon Europa.
Credit: Southwest Research Institute (Dan Durda)/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Ken Moscati) |
