Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is about to welcome a robotic visitor.
NASA’s New Horizons probe will make its closest pass by the gas giant at about 12:45 a.m. EST (0545 GMT) Wednesday in a sort of cosmic stopover on its long trek to distant Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The planetary flyby comes just 13 months after New Horizons’ launch, with the probe hurtling through space at about 47,000 miles per hour (75,639 kph) on what NASA is billing as its fastest mission to solar system’s edge.
How I wish I could have stowed away on this spacecraft and gone along on its journey
....although it might have been a bit cramped as the New Horizons probe is pretty small.
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