"NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has already turned up some surprises at
Jupiter. The probe, ultimately bound for Pluto and other objects in the
outer solar system, is making a flyby of the solar system's largest
planet to gain speed and test out its instruments.

It will make its closest approach on 28 February, passing just 2.3
million kilometres (1.4 million miles) from Jupiter's centre, but it
started taking the first of 700 planned observations of the planet on 8
January (see Pluto probe begins close-up study of Jupiter).

"Today we stand on the doorstep of the Jupiter system, which is the
gateway to the outer solar system," says New Horizons principal
investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder,
Colorado, US."

More at http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10998