NASA's New Horizons is On its Way to Pluto STATUS REPORT Date Released: Thursday, January 19, 2006 Source: NASA HQ
Editor's update 4:20 pm EST: New Horizons' PI Alan Stern just announced that the spacecraft is carrying some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes. Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930.
Success! NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has launched at 2:00 pm EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a fast-moving Atlas V rocket. It's headed for a distant rendezvous with the mysterious planet Pluto almost a decade from now.
The third time was the charm for New Horizons. Two consecutive launch attempts earlier in the week were foiled by high winds at the launch site and a power outage at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which operates the spacecraft now that the mission is underway.
As the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, New Horizons looks to unlock one of the solar system's last, great planetary secrets. After launch aboard an Atlas V, the New Horizons spacecraft will cross the entire span of the solar system and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and Charon in 2015. The seven science instruments on the piano-sized probe will shed light on the bodies' surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres.
The first 13 months of the mission include spacecraft and instrument checkouts, instrument calibrations and trajectory correction maneuvers. There will also be rehearsals for an encounter with Jupiter in spring 2007, in which the giant planet will provide a slingshot-like gravity boost that could save New Horizons up to three years of flight time. This encounter will be followed by an approximately 8-year interplanetary cruise to Pluto.
Registered: Jul 2002
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And it's not stopping at Pluto, if you really wanna nitpick. It keeps going after whipping by over the course of a few mintues, and will eventually reach other Kuiper Belt Objects. It's a really, REALLY long term mission, but if NASA knows how to make 'em last, they'll have made this one to last long enough to get way out there and beyond.
And talk about speed records! It'll be past the moon before tomorrow, and will get a gravity assist from Jupiter in just over a year. Someone had better inform the Discovery on subspace that they're on a reallllly slow nuclear rocket.
posted
Perhaps we'll really be lucky and the spacecraft will last long enough to make flybys of Sedna, Quaoar, and Buffy. But NH will probably be nowhere near them, though.
That aside, this is terrific news. Finally, photos of all 9 planets, plus Kuiper Belt objects!
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
You can't tell the Discovery - their radio broke, remember? (prepares for onslaught from people who have seen 2001 more recently...)
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Yay, billions of dollars spent so some other shmuck could get his ashes spread throughout the universe. (I'm pointing at YOU Roddenberry!) Couldn't he have just waited for the killer meteor to do that for him?
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Wow - Pluto in 9 years! That's pretty impressive, I hadn't realized it would be that quick. Hopefully we'll get some new insight into Jupiter on the way past.
I wonder if you can run Linux on that thing??
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Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
I read somewhere that because they couldn't launch on the first try, it won't be getting the gravity assist from Jupiter. The timing would not be right or something.
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Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
That seems odd- Mabye they have to make a slight tweak but I'm sure some assist can be made- they adjusted Galeleo's trajectory several times in-flight. Speaking of which, here's a cool (if hideous) site with lots of goodies (particularly on the recently completed Stardust mission).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Well, that post wins the awards for crappiest page I've seen on the internet in over a year AND the coolest page I've seen on the internet in over a year. Thanks for making my day.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
quote:Originally posted by Dat: I read somewhere that because they couldn't launch on the first try, it won't be getting the gravity assist from Jupiter. The timing would not be right or something.
It was a string of launch windows open until about February 14th, after which is when they wouldn't be able to get the gravity assist. But we don't have to worry about that anymore, since they made the window!
posted
I'm uncertain how much I'm for this mission, sure Pluto is the only... Really big comet, or small planetoid we've not sent a probe past... I think I'd rather see us send an orbital satelite to another world instead, such as a modified weather satelite to Jupiter or Saturn.... Something that could stay there and remain in orbit to look around for a period of years, something that could send back first hand video of impacts, or anything else that goes on. The probe is going to whiz past Pluto so quickly it will only serve to give us the wee-est of glances as it flies by.
Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Going to Pluto now is a good idea in terms of this atmosphere-freezing-solid-for-200+years thing. Going to Mars now is smart because we have existing relay stations and mappers in orbit, but with limited lifetime warranties.
The rest of the Sol system will stay out there and patiently wait for later exploration.
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
I can almost see the future now. It's 22 something or other. and Humankind creates a starship capable of traveling to another solar system. The only bad part, is that some crazed Star Trek fanboy made his way to the top of NASA and made sure the ship looked like the USS Enterprise...
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
quote:Originally posted by Shakaar: I'm uncertain how much I'm for this mission, sure Pluto is the only... Really big comet, or small planetoid we've not sent a probe past... I think I'd rather see us send an orbital satelite to another world instead, such as a modified weather satelite to Jupiter or Saturn.... Something that could stay there and remain in orbit to look around for a period of years, something that could send back first hand video of impacts, or anything else that goes on. The probe is going to whiz past Pluto so quickly it will only serve to give us the wee-est of glances as it flies by.
We cant really do that for lots of reasons- mostly the billions of uncharted rocks, pebbles and boulders in Jupiter, and it's various moon's orbits. Jupiter acts like a vaccum cleaner for our solar system- constantly pulling in comets and asterpods that would otherwise dive further into the inner planet's orbits. Good for us, bad for figuring out stable orbits for a lot of the changing orbits in the "Jovian System".
Even stuff like Cassini stays well away from this enourmous gravity well -and it's been mostly good luck that the probes we've sent into atmoshere there were not intercepted by anything first.
Really, it's incredible how much good luck the various space programs have enjoyed- just last night there was (on the Science CHannel) an intresting decumentary on how the Apollo astronauts had no clue if they would be exposed to serious levels of cosmic rays (as solar mapping was at best, in it's infantcy back then).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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