Boston Globe, others: New Horizons, on long trek to Pluto, checks in from Jupiter

Several outlets in the last week or so have written up a passel of data, including images, sent from Jupiter by the New Horizons spacecraft. It visited the jovian system in Feb. for a gravity-fed course correction and a bit of extra zip on its voyage to Pluto, a first for any spacecraft.

The Boston Globe‘s Colin Nickerson had it in yesterday, and tells of “lightning a thousand times more powerful than ordinary bolts on Earth,” new info on the ionized clouds roiling around the great planets, and on its immense magnetic field. The data emerged at a meeting last week of the Division of Planetary Sciences, of the Amer. Astronomical Soc’y. Science magazine has a trove of papers in its current issue too. The probe left Earth a little more than a year ago. It is due at Pluto in 2015.

Image – Europa rising, hi res.

Other stories:

Nat’l Geographic Richard A. Lovett; SpaceDaily Alan Stern (ringer!, he’s a NASA honcho and mission PI); NYTimes Warren E. Leary ; BBC Molly Bentley ; Baltimore Sun Frank D. Roylance;

Grist for the Mill:

NASA/New Horizons Press Release; Image Gallery;

-CP