Five amazing facts about the New Horizons probe

Five amazing facts about the New Horizons probe

by Jonathan O'Callaghan, 21 May 2013
Five things you might not have known about this Pluto-bound spacecraft.







0




5,431 views 0comments


It's the fastest spacecraft ever launched
New Horizons entered directly into an Earth and Sun escape trajectory after launching on 19 January 2006 at a velocity of 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), making it the fastest spacecraft to ever leave Earth orbit, 100 times faster than a jetliner.

It's now the closest manmade object to Pluto (and it's getting closer)
Until 2 December 2011 the Voyager 1 spacecraft held the "record" for the closest approach to Pluto, a mammoth 10.58 times further than the Earth-Sun distance. New Horizons is now within this record.

Its journey is almost equal to 32 trips between the Earth and the Sun
On 14 July 2015 – 3,462 days after launching and having travelled 4.76 billion kilometres (2.96 billion miles) – New Horizons will become the first probe ever to flyby Pluto. It will observe the once ninth planet of the Solar System for several weeks.

It could hit a hidden Plutonian moon
Five known moons are known to currently be in orbit around Pluto, but three of these were discovered in just the last couple of years. Pluto may have more unknown hidden moons, or other objects like asteroids, that could pose a threat to New Horizons as it approaches.

Its mission will continue beyond Pluto
New Horizons will use Pluto's gravity to give it an additional speed boost to make its way into the outer Solar System. Here it will observe Kuiper Belt Objects, if there are any around, until 2020. The mission will officially end in 2026.
Image courtesy of John Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/NASA

- See more at: Five amazing facts about the New Horizons probe | Spaceanswers.com

Source: Five amazing facts about the New Horizons probe | Spaceanswers.com

[h=3]New Horizons Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Approach Pluto[/h]













[TABLE="class: table_generic center, width: 450"]
[TR]
[TD="align: center"]Play ScienceCast Video[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Join Mailing List[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Dec 3, 2011: NASA's New Horizons mission reached a special milestone yesterday, Dec. 2, 2011, on its way to reconnoiter the Pluto system, coming closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft.

It's taken New Horizons 2,143 days of high-speed flight – covering more than a million kilometers per day for nearly six years-to break the closest-approach mark of 1.58 billion kilometers set by NASA's Voyager 1 in January 1986.

Click on the image to view the current position of New Horizons as it races toward Pluto.

"What a cool milestone!" says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "Although we're still a long way - 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto - we're now in new territory as the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to Pluto, and getting closer every day by over a million kilometers.
Now New Horizons, which is healthy, on course and closer to Pluto than Voyager ever came, will continue to set proximity-to-Pluto records every day until its closest approach – about 7,767 miles (12,500 kilometers) from the planet – on July 14, 2015.

New Horizons' current view of Pluto still resembles this image snapped by the spacecraft's long-range telescopic camera in 2007; that will change exponentially beginning in late 2014, as New Horizons speeds closer to its target planet and its cameras begin to resolve details.

"We've come a long way across the solar system," says Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "When we launched [on Jan. 19, 2006] it seemed like our 10-year journey would take forever, but those years have been passing us quickly. We're almost six years in flight, and it's just about three years until our encounter begins."
From New Horizons' current distance to Pluto – about as far as Earth is from Saturn – Pluto remains just a faint point of light. But by the time New Horizons sails through the Pluto system in mid-2015, the planet and its moons will be so close that the spacecraft's cameras will spot features as small as a football field.
"I wonder how long it will be until the next Pluto spacecraft - perhaps a future orbiter or lander - crosses this distance marker?" Stern continues. "It could be decades."

New Horizons is currently in hibernation, with all but its most essential systems turned off, speeding away from the Sun at more than 55,500 kilometers per hour. Operators at the Applied Physics Lab will "wake" the spacecraft in January for a month of testing and maintenance activities.
Check the New Horizons homepage for more information and updates en route to Pluto: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
[TABLE="class: table_generic, width: 595"]
[TR]
[TH]More Information[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dwarf Planet Mysteries Beckon to New Horizons --- Science@NASA
New Horizons -- JHU-APL home page
New Horizons --- NASA home page
Credits: New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program of medium-class spacecraft exploration projects. APL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and is operating the spacecraft in flight. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Source: New Horizons Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Approach Pluto - NASA Science