New Horizons: Downlink Initiated
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 12 Mar 2007 15:59:21 -0700
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspectives/piPerspective_current.php
The PI's Perspective
Alan Stern
Downlink Initiated
March 12, 2007
New Horizons is about 0.15 astronomical units from Jupiter now, and
already 5.5 AU from the Sun! Our final imaging and spectroscopy
observations of Jupiter system targets wrapped up last week.
Henceforth,
the only Jupiter system observations New Horizons will make are
magnetotail environment measurements using our PEPSSI and SWAP
charged-particle spectrometers and, beginning in April, interplanetary
dust measurements by Venetia, our Student Dust Counter.
On March 7, the spacecraft began downlinking its storehouse of 36-plus
gigabits of Jupiter data. From now though May, we expect to receive 6
to
8 hours of Deep Space Network time, virtually every day, for this data
playback. Already a variety of Alice ultraviolet and Ralph infrared
spectra, as well as LORRI images of Jupiter, its tenuous ring system
and
of its moon Io, have been sent to the ground. Every week, for the next
8
to 10 weeks, you can expect to see one or more image releases at our
mission Web site.
The next big event on the spacecraft occurs March 21, when we fire our
maneuvering jets to spin the spacecraft up like a top, stably rotating
it at 5 RPM to save fuel now that the pointing operations associated
with the Jupiter flyby are complete. This is how we flew most of the
cruise to Jupiter, and it's also the way we'll fly most of the way to
Pluto.
Although I won't be writing weekly blogs now that Jupiter is well
behind
us, you can look forward to a late-April or early-May press conference
to show off some of the most exciting data we've received. Meanwhile,
keep on exploring, as we do!
.
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