* Astronomy

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RE: New Horizons mission

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New horizons for distant worlds

Planetary scientist Dr Andrew Prentice can't wait to find out what NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will tell us about Pluto.
As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft speeds towards humanity's historic first encounter with the frozen world of Pluto, over three billion kilometres away planetary scientist Dr Andrew Prentice sits quietly in his office dreaming of the upcoming encounter.
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Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Today the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft passed the halfway point between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, zooming past another milepost on its historic trek to the planetary frontier.
New Horizons, launched in January 2006 and set to visit the Pluto system in July 2015, is the first spacecraft to cross this distant region since NASA's Voyager probes in the late 1980s. New Horizons is now more than 25 astronomical units from Earth - one AU being the distance between the Earth and sun, 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. New Horizons crossed the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011. It'll pass the orbit of Neptune on Aug. 25, 2014 - exactly 25 years after Voyager 2 made its historic exploration of that planet. The distance between the orbits of the two gas giants is about a billion miles.
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Pluto probe faces icy reception

Scientists are concerned that debris around the distant world Pluto could damage or even destroy a multi-million dollar probe.
The concern is so great that managers have started working to determine the level of threat being faced by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, and whether it might be necessary to change course.
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Pluto moons may pose threat to Nasa spacecraft

Newly discovered moons around Pluto may pose a hazard to Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft, which is en route to the dwarf planet, according to scientists.
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At Pluto, Moons and Debris May Be Hazardous to New Horizons

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is now almost seven years into its 9½-year journey across the solar system to explore Pluto and its system of moons. Just over two years from now, in January 2015, New Horizons will begin encounter operations, which will culminate in a close approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, and the first-ever exploration of a planet in the Kuiper Belt.
As New Horizons has travelled through space, its science team has become increasingly aware of the possibility that dangerous debris may be orbiting in the Pluto system, putting the spacecraft and its exploration objectives into harm's way.
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New Horizons Kuiper Belt Fly-through

A new computer simulation from NASA's New Horizons mission offers a look at the latest objects discovered in the distant Kuiper Belt - from the vantage point of the Pluto-bound spacecraft itself.
Created by Alex Parker, a New Horizons outer solar system science fellow from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., the simulation takes "passengers" by dozens of newly discovered Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) near New Horizons' trajectory to Pluto and beyond.
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New Horizons Doing Science in Its Sleep

NASA's New Horizons, now almost 24 times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, is back in hibernation, a slumbering state in which it will remain until January 2013.
But hibernation aboard the spacecraft isn't quite what it used to be.
Starting this month, New Horizons - the first emissary to Pluto and the third planetary zone of our solar system, and fifth spacecraft to explore the outer heliosphere - has been given a "go" from mission managers to start collecting data on interplanetary space during its long hibernation periods on the way to the Pluto system.
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First Announcement: The Pluto System on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons: Perspectives and Predictions

In mid-2015, NASA's New Horizons mission will conduct the first spacecraft reconnaissance of the Pluto system.
In preparation for that flyby, the New Horizons project team will hold a scientific conference at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory 22-26 July 2013. The conference objectives are:

- To integrate information about this planet, its satellites, and their context in the Kuiper Belt.
- To encourage groundbased and spacebased proposals to provide additional context alongside the New Horizons encounter. And,
- To inform about the 6-month long New Horizons encounter for those interested in proposing to the Pluto System Data Analysis Program.