The NASA spacecraft on the way to Pluto has discovered lightning in the polar regions of Jupiter, scientists said on Tuesday. It also found that the volcanically active moon Io belches out tonnes of material that travels hundreds of millions of kilometers down Jupiter's long magnetic tail.
The spacecraft, New Horizons, was launched in January of last year and made a close pass to Jupiter on Feb. 28 of this year to get a slingshot-like gravity boost designed to cut three years off its trip to Pluto, which it is to reach in July 2015.
New Horizons scientists took advantage of the trip around Jupiter to test the craft's seven scientific instruments and operational procedures in a trial run for Pluto, and said the exercise produced 700 separate observations that resulted in fundamental new discoveries.
"What we found blew a lot of people away," said Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the mission and head of the Science Directorate of NASA.
Besides confirming and amplifying findings from seven previous spacecraft that have visited Jupiter, it produced unexpected knowledge about the planet's environment, Stern said.
"We had a great set of instruments and showed up at the right time to make some fascinating observations," Stern said in an interview. "The results add tremendously to our understanding of Jupiter and its moons," he said.
Jupiter has lightning strikes near both poles, the team found, a phenomenon previously observed only on Earth.
On the moon Io, the closest to Jupiter, the spacecraft spotted 11 volcanic plumes.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
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