The NASA New Horizons mission will make its closest approach to Jupiter a half-hour from the moment I hit "publish" on this blog post — that's 28 February 2007, at 05:43:40 UTC. Next stop: Pluto.
To commemorate today's historic Jupiter flyby, The Planetary Society has published images which will be sealed in a Digital Time Capsule, and unlocked in the year 2015 (when the craft is scheduled to reach Pluto).
There are a number of different image categories, but my favorite are the tech ones — a screengrab of Windows XP, a double-A battery, or the one where a bunch of ipods are stacked on a laptop. That's all gonna look so lame in 8 years.
Snip from announcement:
When New Horizons arrives at Pluto eight years from now, the Society will open the time capsule to remember the world as it was when the mission launched. Fifty images submitted by people in 17 countries have been selected, and tonight's encounter with Jupiter will begin a countdown to closing the capsule until the spacecraft arrives at Pluto."When we open the Digital Time Capsule in 2015, New Horizons will be looking back at Earth from a distance measured both in time and in miles," said Bruce Betts, The Planetary Society's Director of Projects. "Much will have changed on that pale blue dot by the time the spacecraft arrives at Pluto."
Link to a website where you can view the images through March 31, 2007. The photos are burned on a DVD, stored securely at Planetary Society Headquarters in Pasadena, CA, with a backup copy stored with the New Horizons project:
As the spacecraft approaches its rendezvous with Pluto, it will send back a "family portrait" of the Pluto system. The return of this image from the spacecraft will be used as the signal for the time capsule to be opened and shown to Earth in 2015.
