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TOPIC: New Horizons mission
Blobrana


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Remember:

Celebrate 75 years of Pluto with a special E-Card - and sign up to send your name to Pluto!
NASA is preparing to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. It will be the first earth device to get intimate with the icy planet. And you can be there too - or, at least, your name.
NASA is asking everyone to send them their names, which will be attached in the space device. The New Horizons probe will be launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, in the outskirts of the Solar System. It is expected that the probe will return to earth in approximately 50 thousand years.


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Blobrana


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A piano-sized probe destined to be the first to study Pluto is being shaken, baked and frozen at two Maryland labs in preparation for a 10 year trip to the edge of the solar system.

The New Horizons probe was shipped last month from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, where it was designed and built, to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt for the second round of testing.
At the Hopkins lab, the probe was tested on a ``shake table'' that simulates the vibrations it will experience during launch atop an Atlas V rocket, one of NASA's largest launch vehicles.

At Goddard, it will be spun to check the probe's balance and alignment; placed in front of wall-sized speakers that simulate the noise of launch; and then put in a four story thermal vacuum chamber that will expose it to the extreme temperature swings and airless conditions of space.

If the 1,000-pound probe passes all the tests, it will be shipped this fall to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for launch in January or early February. Any delay would add about three years to the trip to Pluto because Jupiter would not be in the right position to give it a gravity boost along the way, said project scientist Hal Weaver of the Applied Physics Laboratory.

As launch rockets have become more powerful, pushing their payloads into space at much higher speeds, such testing has become even more important, Weaver said. New Horizons, for example, will pass the moon in nine hours, compared to three days for the Apollo astronauts in the 1970s, and is expected to reach Jupiter in 13 months instead of the six years needed for the Galileo probe in the early 1990s, Weaver said.

New Horizons must also be able to withstand the harsh conditions of deep space. To simulate those conditions, the vacuum chamber has ''thermal shrouds'' through which liquid nitrogen flows at more than 300 degrees below zero, creating ''as much as we can, as well as we can, what the environment is when it's actually on the way to Pluto, and see if it still works,'' Weaver said.

Pluto is the farthest planet in the solar system and the last to be visited by a spacecraft. Little is known about the frigid planet and its large moon, Charon. The moon is about half the size of Pluto, and the two are actually a binary planet, or a pair of planets, whose centre of gravity is between the two.
Although binary planets and binary star systems are thought to be common in the universe, New Horizons will be the first spacecraft to explore a binary planet.
The probe also will study the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects at the edge of the solar system.
The belt is thought to be the source of most short-period comets, those with orbits less than 200 years, and scientists are looking to compare the composition and surface properties of Pluto and Charon to those of comets.
New Horizons should reach the Kuiper Belt about three years after passing Pluto, and the probe is expected to run out of power between 2023 and 2025, Weaver said.
The principal investigator for the $650 million mission, Alan Stern of the South-western Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said making sure all goes well is also important because Pluto is on the outbound portion of its 250-year orbit. That means the atmosphere around the planet could ''snow-out,'' or freeze to a solid and fall to the surface, ''and there won't be an atmosphere for us to study if we wait too long.''

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Blobrana


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Send your name on the New Horizons spacecraft!

Names entered on the mission Web site will be recorded onto a special compact disc, which the team plans to mount on the spacecraft before its journey.
After signing up you can print a personalized participation certificate.

Click here for the sign-up form: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ecard/sendName_ecard_content.html

The New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission is scheduled to launch in January 2006, swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and reach Pluto and its moon, Charon, in July 2015.
Then the spacecraft would head deeper into the Kuiper Belt to study one or more of the icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.



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Blobrana


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The first spacecraft designed to study Pluto, the solar system’s farthest planet, took the first steps on a long journey today when it was shipped from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, US. — where it was designed and built — to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, US, for its next round of pre-launch tests.

The New Horizons spacecraft spent the past week in an APL vibration test lab, where engineers checked the structural integrity of the piano-sized probe aboard a large shake table.
The table simulated the energetic ride New Horizons would encounter during lift-off aboard an Atlas V – one of the largest launch vehicles NASA uses.

“Our testing program is off to a good start…We’ve shown that New Horizons is structurally ready for the ride on the launch vehicle, and now we’ll test it in the full range of conditions it would face on the voyage to Pluto, Pluto's moon, Charon, and beyond.” - Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at APL.


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Blobrana


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After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, the planet drew considerable scrutiny. Unfortunately, modern analysis shows that many Pluto observations from the 1930s and 40s were unreliable. Measurements of Pluto's brightness made from photographic plates were off by as much as 1 magnitude because of errors in the brightness of comparison stars.



This true-colour map shows how Pluto's surface varies in reflectivity. This map was created from data obtained at the McDonald Observatory in Texas during periods when Pluto was being partially eclipsed by its moon Charon. Because the two worlds are tidally locked, the map only shows Pluto's Charon-facing hemisphere.


To know Pluto's true brightness during those earlier times, Luke T. Smith and Bradley E. Schaefer re-measured photographic plates from 1933-34 using modern equipment and have produced an accurate light curve for the planet in the years shortly after its discovery....
The two astronomers then compared Pluto's brightness to models developed by Marc W. Buie (Lowell Observatory).



The light curve shows Pluto’s changing brightness over its 6.39-day rotation period. The light curve was created from photographic plates taken in 1933-34, but, Pluto was 0.05 magnitudes fainter than expected in the early 1930s.

"We thought Pluto would be brighter than it actually was"- Luke Smith.




Pluto's highly eccentric orbit causes significant brightness changes as well as the planet showing different surfaces towards the Earth. When Pluto comes close to the Sun, it also forms a thin atmosphere. The gases freeze back on the surface of Pluto and its moon Charon when Pluto is far from the Sun.

After accounting for Pluto's greater distance from the Sun in the 1940s and Earth's viewing geometry, Pluto turns out to be 0.05 magnitudes (5 percent) dimmer than Buie's model predicts.
The key to explaining Pluto's faintness during this period lies in the planet's unusual spin axis, which is tipped by 120 degrees relative to the plane of Pluto's orbit.
In the 1930s, Pluto's southern hemisphere was pointed almost directly toward the Sun, whereas in more recent decades, Pluto's equator has been aimed toward the Sun.
In 1933-34, Pluto was approaching the Sun on its highly eccentric orbit at a distance of 40 astronomical units. With the planet's southern hemisphere basking in perpetual sunlight, frosts of volatile compounds such as methane probably vaporized to form a rarefied atmosphere, and then condensed on the darker and colder northern hemisphere, which was hidden from view.
With less ice on its Sun-facing side, Pluto would have grown slightly darker.

"This is the only way to study Pluto that far back. Pluto's surface would have been different, and now we're starting to get a handle on that" - Bradley E. Schaefer.
"We have seen implications of atmospheric changes from frost formation and vaporization directly as changes in its light curve. We know Pluto has an atmosphere, but there's a lot of work to understand how Pluto's atmosphere changes." - Luke Smith.






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Blobrana


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New Horizons Mission
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Update May 24, 2005

'Motivated' Team Eyes Mission's Next Stage
Pluto might be about 3 billion miles from Earth, but it seems a little closer for the team leading NASA's proposed first mission to the "last planet."

With spacecraft assembly and several successful mission simulations and system performance tests behind them, New Horizons team members are gearing up for the mission's next stage: pre-launch space environment testing. In early June, the spacecraft is scheduled to move from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. - where it was designed and built - to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. At Goddard, New Horizons will get a full dose of the rough, cold and airless conditions it would encounter during launch and the planned voyage to Pluto and its moon, Charon.

"Everyone has worked very hard to get to this point," says Glen Fountain, the New Horizons project manager at APL. "System-level tests have gone well and we're in good shape. The team is motivated - we've come a long way over the past year and we are ready to get into the environmental test program."

NASA proposes to launch New Horizons in January 2006, aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. After launch, New Horizons would swing through the Jupiter system in February or March 2007, getting a gravity push toward Pluto-Charon and a chance to exercise its science instruments on the large planet. It could reach Pluto-Charon - and begin a detailed, six-month flyby reconnaissance study - as early as 2015.

APL manages New Horizons for NASA's Science Mission Directorate; Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute's Department of Space Studies leads the mission as principal investigator. The mission team includes major partners in Ball Aerospace, Boeing, the Department of Energy, KinetX, Inc., Lockheed Martin, Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Kennedy Space Center, the University of Colorado and Stanford University.

Launch Approval Update

New Horizons' travels would take it to a new class of worlds at the edge of our solar system - and to a region too far from the Sun for solar panels to work. Spacecraft designs call for a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to power new Horizons' systems and science instruments.

NASA's environmental and launch risk analyses for launching New Horizons with an RTG continues. The public comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement ended April 11; NASA is now working on a Final Environmental Impact Statement, projected for release this summer. The agency expects to issue its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) record of decision for New Horizons this fall. If NASA decides to proceed with launch preparation, it will then request final approval to launch from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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Blobrana


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April was a memorable month for the New Horizons spacecraft team, for it saw the completion of spacecraft assembly and the accomplishment of a thorough Comprehensive Performance Test (CPT) that put the spacecraft and its seven instruments through rigorous functional testing.


The upcoming New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission is designed to help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and Charon – a "double planet" system and the last in our solar system to be visited by spacecraft.
The mission would then visit one or more Kuiper Belt Objects, in the region beyond Neptune.

New Horizons is scheduled to launch in January 2006, swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and reach Pluto and its moon, Charon, in July 2015. Then the spacecraft would head deeper into the Kuiper Belt to study one or more of the icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.

Sending a spacecraft on this long journey could help us answer basic questions about these bodies’ surface properties, geology, interior makeup, and atmospheres.



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