Life of Guangzhou - Pluto-bound New Horizons Spacecraft Provides New Look at Jupiter System

This composite image released by NASA in 2003 shows a "family portrait" of the Jovian system including the edge of Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, and Jupiter's four largest moons, known as the Galilean satellites. (Reuters Photo)

NASA announced Tuesday that its New Horizons spacecraft has provided new data on the Jupiter system, stunning scientists with never-before-seen perspectives of the giant planet's atmosphere, rings, moons and magnetosphere.

These new views include the closest look yet at Jupiter's Earth-sized "Little Red Spot" storm churning materials through Jupiter's cloud tops. The Little Red Spot, Jupiter's second-largest storm, formed as a result of three smaller storms merging during the past decade. The storm began turning red about a year before New Horizons flew past it.

Scientists will search for clues about how these systems form and why the materials spinning within and around the nascent storm have a tendency to change color.

Under a range of lighting and viewing angles, New Horizons also grabbed the clearest images ever of the tenuous Jovian ring system. In them, scientists spotted a series of unexpected arcs and clumps of dust, indicative of a recent impact into the ring bya small object.

New Horizons also observed the volcanic eruptions and circular grooves on the planet's largest moons.

New Horizons came to within 2.5 million km of Jupiter on Feb. 28, using the planet's gravity to shave three years off its travel time to Pluto.

For several weeks before and after this closest approach, the piano-sized robotic probe trained its seven cameras and sensors on Jupiter and its four largest moons, storing data from nearly 700 observations on its digital recorders and gradually sending that information back to Earth.

About 70 percent of the expected 34 gigabits of data has come back so far. "Aside from setting up our 2015 arrival at Pluto, the Jupiter flyby was a stress test of our spacecraft and team, and both passed with very high marks," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern.