New Horizons: A mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt

[Rick]

What If Voyager Had Explored Pluto?

Across flights launched in 1977 and spanning the entirety of the 1980s, Voyagers 1 and 2 performed the historic, first detailed reconnaissance of our solar system's four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus). The essentially identical Voyagers were launched with a core mission to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems, and each spacecraft carried a powerful and diverse scientific instrument suite. After Saturn, Voyager 2 was tasked with reconnoitering Uranus and Neptune during an extended mission.

Although Pluto's orbital position relative to Neptune made it impossible for Voyager 2 to travel to it from Neptune, Voyager 1 actually could have reached Pluto after its Saturn flyby, had it been targeted to do so. In fact, NASA and the Voyager project actually considered this option, but eliminated it in 1980 â€" going instead with the very exiting but lower-risk opportunity to investigate Saturn's large, scientifically enticing, cloud-enshrouded and liquid-bearing moon Titan.

But if Voyager 1 had been sent to Pluto, it would have arrived in the spring of 1986, just after Voyager 2's exploration of Uranus that January. As New Horizons approaches Pluto in 2015, it's fun to think what we might have found almost 30 years ago had Voyager 1 - rather than New Horizons - been first to Pluto.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php

[Rick]

Hubble to Proceed with Full Search for New Horizons Targets

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been given the go-ahead to conduct an intensive search for a suitable outer solar system object that the New Horizons (NH) spacecraft could visit after the probe streaks though the Pluto system in July 2015.

Hubble observations will begin in July and are expected to conclude in August.

Assuming a suitable target is found at the completion of the survey and some follow-up observations are made later in the year, if NASA approves, the New Horizon's trajectory can be modified in the fall of 2015 to rendezvous with the target Kuiper Belt object (KBO) three to four years later.

More: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/35/full/

[Rick]

New Horizons Marks a 'Year Out' with a Successful Course Correction

New Horizons performed a slight course correction yesterday, a short maneuver designed to correct the spacecraft's arrival time – a year from now – at the precisely intended aim point at Pluto.

The maneuver – during which New Horizons fired its thrusters for just under 88 seconds – sped the craft up by about 2.4 miles per hour and keeps it on track for a flight past Pluto that culminates next July 14. "If we hadn't performed this maneuver, we would have arrived at Pluto about 36 minutes later than we wanted to," said Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "Making the adjustment now means we won't have to perform a bigger maneuver – and use more of the spacecraft's fuel – down the road."

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140715.php

[Rick]

ALMA Pinpoints Pluto to Help Guide NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are making high-precision measurements of Pluto's location and orbit around the Sun to help NASA's New Horizons spacecraft accurately home in on its target when it nears Pluto and its five known moons in July 2015.

Though observed for decades with ever-larger optical telescopes on Earth and in space, astronomers are still working out Pluto's exact position and path around our Solar System. This lingering uncertainty is due to Pluto's extreme distance from the Sun (approximately 40 times farther out than the Earth) and the fact that we have been studying it for only about one-third of its orbit. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and takes 248 years to complete one revolution around the Sun.

"With these limited observational data, our knowledge of Pluto's position could be wrong by several thousand kilometers, which compromises our ability to calculate efficient targeting maneuvers for the New Horizons spacecraft," said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The New Horizons team made use of the ALMA positioning data, together with newly analyzed visible light measurements stretching back to Pluto's discovery, to determine how to perform the first such scheduled course correction for targeting, known as a Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM), in July. This maneuver helped ensure that New Horizons uses the minimum fuel to reach Pluto, saving as much as possible for a potential extended mission to explore Kuiper Belt objects after the Pluto system flyby is complete.

More: https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/alma-pluto

[Rick]

New Horizons Spies Charon Orbiting Pluto

Like explorers of old peering through a shipboard telescope for a faint glimpse of their destination, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is taking a distant look at the Pluto system – in preparation for its historic encounter with the planet and its moons next summer.

"Filmed" with New Horizons' best onboard telescope – the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) – this movie covers Pluto and almost one full rotation of its largest moon, Charon. The 12 images that make up the movie were taken July 19-24, from a distance ranging from about 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million kilometers). Charon is orbiting approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto's surface.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140807.php

[ApophisAstros]

on this gif  some stars seem to appear and disappear!
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/PR_E12_proper_sat_stars_3fps.gif
rogern

[Rick]

New Horizons Commanded into Last Pre-Pluto Slumber

NASA's Pluto-bound spacecraft was put into hibernation this morning, following a successful 10-week annual checkout period. Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, verified that New Horizons entered hibernation at 9:21 a.m. EDT. With New Horizons now beyond Neptune's orbit – more than 2.75 billion miles from Earth – that signal needed just over four hours to reach the mission operations center through NASA's Deep Space Network.

"This is the final hibernation period on the flight to Pluto," says Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "When we wake up in December, it's to prepare for encounter, which begins the following month!"

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140829.php

[Rick]

New Horizons Makes its First Detection of Pluto's Moon Hydra

Using its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), New Horizons made its first detection of Pluto's small, faint, outermost known moon, Hydra. The images were taken to practice the long-exposure mosaics that the New Horizons team will use to search for additional moons and potentially hazardous debris near Pluto as the spacecraft approaches the Pluto system in May and June 2015.

Analysis of those images in September by Science Team members John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute, and Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, revealed Hydra —a moon the mission didn't expect to detect until next January, when New Horizons will be about twice as close as it was in July.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140912.php

[Rick]

Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission

Peering out to the dim, outer reaches of our solar system, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered three Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) the agency's New Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit after it flies by Pluto in July 2015.

The KBOs were detected through a dedicated Hubble observing program by a New Horizons search team that was awarded telescope time for this purpose.

"This has been a very challenging search and it's great that in the end Hubble could accomplish a detection – one NASA mission helping another," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.

The Kuiper Belt is a vast rim of primordial debris encircling our solar system. KBOs belong to a unique class of solar system objects that has never been visited by spacecraft and which contain clues to the origin of our solar system.

The KBOs Hubble found are each about 10 times larger than typical comets, but only about 1-2 percent of the size of Pluto. Unlike asteroids, KBOs have not been heated by the sun and are thought to represent a pristine, well preserved deep-freeze sample of what the outer solar system was like following its birth 4.6 billion years ago. The KBOs found in the Hubble data are thought to be the building blocks of dwarf planets such as Pluto.

More from NASA

[Rick]

New Horizons Set to Wake Up for Pluto Encounter

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation for the last time on Dec. 6. Between now and then, while the Pluto-bound probe enjoys three more weeks of electronic slumber, work on Earth is well under way to prepare the spacecraft for a six-month encounter with the dwarf planet that begins in January.

"New Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space – nearly three billion miles from home – but its rest is nearly over," says Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "It's time for New Horizons to wake up, get to work, and start making history."

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20141113.php

[Rick]

On Pluto's Doorstep, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens

Operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., confirmed at 9:53 p.m. (EST) that New Horizons, operating on pre-programmed computer commands, had switched from hibernation to "active" mode. Moving at light speed, the radio signal from New Horizons – currently more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth, and just over 162 million miles from Pluto – needed four hours and 26 minutes to reach NASA's Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia.

"This is a watershed event that signals the end of New Horizons crossing of a vast ocean of space to the very frontier of our solar system, and the beginning of the mission's primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Since launching on January 19, 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days — about two-thirds of its flight time — in hibernation. Its 18 separate hibernation periods, from mid-2007 to late 2014, ranged from 36 days to 202 days in length. The team used hibernation to save wear and tear on spacecraft components and reduce the risk of system failures.

More from NASA

[Rick]

New Horizons Begins First Stages of Pluto Encounter

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has begun its long-awaited, historic encounter with Pluto, entering the first of several approach phases that will culminate with the first close-up flyby of the Pluto system six months from now.

"NASA's first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind's first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "The New Horizons team worked very hard to prepare for this first phase, and they did it flawlessly."

New Horizons launched in January 2006 and, after a voyage of more than 3 billion miles, will soar close to Pluto, inside the orbits of its five known moons, this July 14. The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons awoke from its final hibernation period in early December. Since then, the mission's science, engineering and spacecraft operations teams have configured the piano-sized probe for distant observations of the Pluto system, starting with a long-range photo shoot that begins Jan. 25.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20150115.php

[Rick]

NASA Spacecraft Returns New Images of Pluto En Route to Historic Encounter

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft returned its first new images of Pluto on Wednesday, as the probe closes in on the dwarf planet. Although still just a dot along with its largest moon, Charon, the images come on the 109th birthday of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the distant icy world in 1930.

"My dad would be thrilled with New Horizons," said Clyde Tombaugh's daughter Annette Tombaugh, of Las Cruces, New Mexico. "To actually see the planet that he had discovered, and find out more about it -- to get to see the moons of Pluto-- he would have been astounded. I'm sure it would have meant so much to him if he were still alive today."

New Horizons was more than 126 million miles (nearly 203 million kilometers) away from Pluto when it began taking images. The new images, taken with New Horizons' telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27, are the first acquired during the spacecraft's 2015 approach to the Pluto system, which culminates with a close flyby of Pluto and its moons on July 14.

More from NASA.

[Rick]

The View from New Horizons: A Full Day on Pluto-Charon

Pluto and Charon were observed for an entire rotation of each body; a "day" on Pluto and Charon is 6.4 Earth days. The first of the images was taken when New Horizons was about 3 billion miles from Earth, but just 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto – about 30% farther than Earth's distance from the Sun. The last frame came 6½ days later, with New Horizons more than 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) closer.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150212

[Rick]

85 Years after Pluto's Discovery, New Horizons Spots Small Moons Orbiting Pluto

Exactly 85 years after Clyde Tombaugh's historic discovery of Pluto, the NASA spacecraft set to encounter the icy planet this summer is providing its first views of the small moons orbiting Pluto.

The moons Nix and Hydra are visible in a series of images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from Jan. 27-Feb. 8, at distances ranging from about 125 million to 115 million miles (201 million to 186 million kilometers). The long-exposure images offer New Horizons' best view yet of these two small moons circling Pluto, which Tombaugh discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Feb. 18, 1930.

"Professor Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto was far ahead its time, heralding the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and a new class of planet," says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "The New Horizons team salutes his historic accomplishment."

Assembled into a seven-frame movie, the new images provide the spacecraft's first extended look at Hydra (identified by a yellow diamond) and its first-ever view of Nix (orange diamond). The right-hand image set has been specially processed to make the small moons easier to see.

"It's thrilling to watch the details of the Pluto system emerge as we close the distance to the spacecraft's July 14 encounter," says New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also from Southwest Research Institute. "This first good view of Nix and Hydra marks another major milestone, and a perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of Pluto's discovery."

See them at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150218