New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

SpaceNut · 2005-11-23 07:40:25

Quite the discovery by Hubble of Pluto's new moons but another surprise may await the probe for when it arrives it may also find rings.

Now thats a double wow...

New Horizons: Voyage To The Edge Of The Solar System

Calculations done by Stern and fellow researchers show that small moons around Pluto—having low escape speeds—when hit by objects not only are craters formed, but debris from the moons would be tossed off into space.
"We’re predicting that Pluto might have a ring system,"

Besides being a RTG Nuclear-powered probe it will carry 7 instruments on its journey.

1. Alice is an ultraviolet spectrometer used for measuring gas composition
2. Ralph combines an infrared spectrometer (LEISA) for mapping surface composition with a color optical imager (MVIC) for mapping surface structure and composition
3. REX is a radio experiment for measuring atmospheric composition and temperature
4. LORRI is an optical telescope that provides the highest resolution imaging of the surface
5. PEPSSI is a plasma-sensing instrument for measuring particles escaping from Pluto's atmosphere
6. SWAP is a plasma-sensing instrument for measuring the properties of the solar wind at Pluto, Pluto's atmospheric escape rate, and for searching for a magnetosphere around Pluto. The "solar wind" is a stream of charged particles streaming away from the Sun at high speed.
7. SDC, an instrument used to measure dust impacts at the New Horizons spacecraft during its entire trajectory, was built by students at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Palomar · 2005-11-25 05:56:36

Quite the discovery by Hubble of Pluto's new moons but another surprise may await the probe for when it arrives it may also find rings.
New Horizons: Voyage To The Edge Of The Solar System
Calculations done by Stern and fellow researchers show that small moons around Pluto—having low escape speeds—when hit by objects not only are craters formed, but debris from the moons would be tossed off into space.
"We’re predicting that Pluto might have a ring system,"

*Wouldn't that be fabulous? Such a small rock ... with 3 moons and rings? Guess we'll find out, but not soon enough.

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2005-12-05 06:46:58

Interesting artilce on Scientists take precautions with battery a nuclear battery intented for the New Horizon probe.

Battery image:
http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/m … ofile=1007

Very well tested against the events that could occur...

SpaceNut · 2005-12-06 06:54:02

More quabbling in the news over the safety of non unionized work done on the probe at Boeing plants.

Union asks NASA to stop Pluto probe work; Strikers again allege safety problems with replacements

Union tells NASA to halt work on Pluto spacecraft; Boeing workers fret about safety

Palomar · 2005-12-21 12:11:58

December 20
Pluto Mission to Carry Piece of SpaceShipOne
The January liftoff of the New Horizons spacecraft bound for Pluto is toting a number of items, including a U.S. flag, as well as a compact disc containing more than 430,000 names.
But at a NASA New Horizons press briefing held December 19, mission officials played it coy in responding to a reporter’s question to be a bit more specific on other objects that might be onboard. That information is to come after departure of the spacecraft.
One of those mystery items to be hauled to Pluto is a piece of SpaceShipOne, the pioneering suborbital rocket plane that made repeat trips to the edge of space in 2004. The milestone-making piloted vehicle is now part of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum collection on public display in Washington, D.C.
Word about the piece of space plane making the voyage to Pluto came last month via SpaceShipOne’s chief designer, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.
“New Horizons…has a piece of carbon fiber from SpaceShipOne and it’s going to Pluto…which is kinda cool,” Rutan told reporters November 12 prior to a gala honoring the aerospace pioneer held at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado.

*That's from Space.com's "Astronotes."

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2006-01-04 06:21:52

There have been a great flurry of articles on the issue of temperature of the planet pluto and its moon charron. It has come to pass that the planet is colder trhan its moon with popular theory going to the thin atmosphere as to its cause. There has also been a few articles calling what Nasa does for science as a waste and to costly for the data gained from doing science. They try to analyze the cost of the missions per the value gained from the questions that get answered.

Here are the links
Pluto is colder than its moon Charon

More outrageous waste

Palomar · 2006-01-06 08:53:37

Instrument to search for dust clumps en route to Pluto

will monitor the density of dust grains in space as New Horizons buzzes to Pluto and beyond. The dust grains are of high interest to researchers because they are the building blocks of the solar system's planets

The student team hopes to identify as-yet-undetected clumps of dust in the dust disk of the solar system caused by the gravity of the outer planets

The SDC detector is a thin, plastic film resting on a honeycombed aluminum structure the size of a cake pan mounted on the outside of the spacecraft, said Horanyi. A small electronic box inside the spacecraft will function as the instrument's "brain" to assess each individual dust particle that strikes the detector during the mission.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2006-01-06 12:42:29

January 6
Protest Planned for Pluto Spacecraft
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space of Brunswick, Maine has called for a demonstration at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Jan. 7 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST (1600-1800 GMT).
The protest will highlight opposition to NASA’s planned New Horizons launch on January 17 that will carry a cache of plutonium to power the Pluto-bound probe’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).
To be launched by an Atlas 5 booster, New Horizons will head out on a long distance journey to shoot past Pluto in 2015. After that flyby, the New Horizons probe -- given NASA-approved extended mission money -- is to study still-to-be selected Kuiper Belt objects, ancient, icy and rocky mini-worlds that are leftovers from the formation of the solar system.
In a statement from Global Network Coordinator, Bruce Gagnon: “We might have escaped Cassini, we might escape New Horizons, but with plans to put nuclear reactors on the Moon to power bases there in the coming years, NASA will be launching a host of these missions. One thing we have learned is that sooner or later, space technology can fail.”

*Blah, blah, blah. Entitled to their opinions and etc., but I'm GLAD these missions have "escaped" them thus far. Neanderthals.

Info is from space.com's "Astronotes" (updated column format).

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2006-01-06 14:30:35

Solution is to have a launch site bult in Russia that can launch the Atlas rocket or even Deltas for these reasons....

Commodore · 2006-01-06 17:06:46

I'm sure they'd protest there too.

SpaceNut · 2006-01-11 08:11:33

Well the news has indicated a very low turn out to protest its launch.

So how little time will it stay in transition from launch pad to orbit and beyound. The answer not all that long. It is said that it will be the fastest probe yet. Mission To Pluto To Take At Least 9 Years

It will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched, zooming past the moon in nine hours and reaching Jupiter in just over a year at a speed nearly 100 times that of a jetliner.
Its target is Pluto -- the solar system's last unexplored planet, 3 billion miles from Earth. And the New Horizons spacecraft, set for liftoff on Tuesday, could reach it within nine years.

Commodore · 2006-01-17 14:17:16

All systems go... except that pestky wind.....

Commodore · 2006-01-17 14:20:03

The countdown is back on at 3min....

Commodore · 2006-01-17 14:22:09

...and back off at 2:34min.

Untill tommorrow.

Commodore · 2006-01-18 12:23:13

Launch put off again do to unexplained power outage.

Which is strange cause my power went of this morning too.

Though it was most likely unrelated. 8)

Commodore · 2006-01-19 13:00:51

Liftoff!

Julius Caeser · 2006-01-19 19:16:50

Lift .......... :oops: :? oh I'm late again!!Anyways,good luck horizons..farewell to Earth.......welcome to pluto!

EuroLauncher · 2006-01-20 04:57:59

Liftoff!

fantastic launch,

very cool video

cIclops · 2006-01-27 12:07:40

Extract from Alan Stern's PI's Perspective (January 24, 2006)

Now that we are launched and safely on our way, we know that our journey will take precisely 3462.7 days, i.e., from 19:00 UTC on Jan, 19, 2006, to 12:00 UTC July 14, 2015, to reach Pluto. Encounter science operations will begin about 150 days before we reach Pluto.
As I write this, on flight day 4, we have roughly 0.1% of the journey behind us. In those four days, the spacecraft team has been conducting subsystem checkouts and designing the trajectory correction maneuvers planned to trim up our route of flight to the precise aim point 2.5 million kilometers from Jupiter, at approximately 05:41 UTC on Feb. 28, 2007.
On Sunday, we completed the spacecraft's planned spin down to 5 RPM (it was 68 RPM for the STAR-48 firing, and 19.2 RPM after an open-loop burn on launch day). Once we did that, we did the initial star tracker turn-on. Until the star-tracker is fully operational, we're still relying on the Sun sensors and Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) for attitude reference - both of which performed very well.
Because of the extremely accurate launch our Atlas V/STAR-48 launcher combination provided, we only need to provide an 18 meter-per-second correction in order to thread that needle at Jupiter. Pre-launch predicts had allowed for maneuvers 5 to 10 times that size. We're all very happy to only have a small correction to make, since this saves propellant for future science mission use. The 18 m/sec correction is planned to be conducted in two parts: a 5 m/sec increment on Jan. 28 and a 13.3 m/sec increment on Jan. 30. We split the maneuvering into two parts to calibrate our propulsion system with a small first burn before going for the majority of the correction. This strategy will allow us to thread the needle more accurately than a single larger burn would have.

cIclops · 2006-01-30 05:52:35

update from: spaceref 28 Jan 2006 - she's looking great

New Horizons performed its first trajectory correction maneuver, TCM-1A, at 1900 UTC today. This was a 5 m/sec calibration burn and validation burn of our propulsion system and delta-V thrusters in preparation for the somewhat larger (12 m/s) TCM-1B maneuver set for 1900 UTC on Monday.
Together these two maneuvers (1A and 1B) will refine our Jupiter aim point substantially to allow us to accurately hit the Jupiter Gravity Assist aim point for Pluto and our desired 14 July 2015 arrival date.
TCM-2 is planned for 15 February. Given the early calibration numbers from TCM-1A, we estimate this maneuver will be a clean up/tweak of about 1 m/s; a more refined estimate for TCM-2 will be available after a couple of weeks of DSN tracking.

cIclops · 2006-02-01 08:34:50

Update from SpaceRef - 31 Jan 2006 - On taget!

TCM-1 was split into two parts, called 1A and 1B. TCM-1A was a 5 meter/second test and calibration firing conducted on Saturday, January 28; TCM-1B was a 13.3 meter/second maneuver conducted on Monday, January 30. Both maneuvers were successful. We plan to trim out the small (about 4%) residuals from the two TCM-1 burns, and to correct to the much better orbit solution we will have from another couple of weeks of tracking by the Deep Space Network (DSN) in TCM-2. This burn, which is likely to be the smallest of the three post-launch maneuvers, is scheduled for Wednesday, February 15.

SpaceNut · 2006-02-15 12:06:38

February 15, 2006 - SpaceRef is pleased to announce today the launch of the newest addition to the SpaceRef network, Pluto Today. Pluto Today covers Pluto, Charon, and other Kuiper Belt Objects including, Sedna, 2003 UB313, as well as asteroids and comets.

cIclops · 2006-02-17 12:56:26

No update on the 15 Feb TCM, maybe it's been cancelled?

cIclops · 2006-02-20 13:40:25

Planetary Radio has an online interview with Alan Stern. Bang uptodate report on the probe's current state, also Stern's work on Rosetta and LRO instruments.

cIclops · 2006-02-26 12:47:05

Now how's this for speed, already halfway to the orbit of Mars ...

And what about New Horizons? Well, it’s halfway to the orbit of Mars now, and the flight mission is continuing smoothly. Last week, we conducted the “Launch Plus 35 Day” review of the engineering and operational aspects of the mission. In this formal, day long review, the engineering leads and the ops team presented the status and lessons learned from the first five weeks of flight to a review team consisting of experienced spacecraft engineers and project managers.
Also last week, we conducted the first testing of instruments in our scientific payload. In total, three instruments were tested last week: ALICE, PEPSSI, and LORRI. (And there is no truth, dear reader, to the rumor that we chose these three to begin with because they spell, A-P-L.)
Although “first light” for each of these three instruments is still in the future the early tests we preformed last week proved that all three instruments survived launch and have good power and command interfaces to the spacecraft. Additionally, each instrument put their microprocessors through various paces, and ALICE unlatched and successfully tested her front door by opening it to space. All of this testing went well and we’re very happy with the engineering data returned to Earth by all three of these instruments.
This week, SWAP and SDC will get turned on and tested similarly to the work done last week with ALICE, PEPSSI, and LORRI. In fact, SDC will even begin collecting data. And so will PEPSSI. Starting in March, we plan to use SDC, PEPSSI, and SWAP a great deal during the flight to Pluto in order to trace out conditions in the interplanetary environment across the space of 5 billion plus kilometers from here to the Kuiper Belt.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#51 2005-11-23 07:40:25

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#52 2005-11-25 05:56:36

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#53 2005-12-05 06:46:58

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#54 2005-12-06 06:54:02

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#55 2005-12-21 12:11:58

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#56 2006-01-04 06:21:52

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#57 2006-01-06 08:53:37

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#58 2006-01-06 12:42:29

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#59 2006-01-06 14:30:35

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#60 2006-01-06 17:06:46

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#61 2006-01-11 08:11:33

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#62 2006-01-17 14:17:16

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#63 2006-01-17 14:20:03

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#64 2006-01-17 14:22:09

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#65 2006-01-18 12:23:13

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#66 2006-01-19 13:00:51

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#67 2006-01-19 19:16:50

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#68 2006-01-20 04:57:59

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#69 2006-01-27 12:07:40

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#70 2006-01-30 05:52:35

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#71 2006-02-01 08:34:50

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#72 2006-02-15 12:06:38

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#73 2006-02-17 12:56:26

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#74 2006-02-20 13:40:25

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

#75 2006-02-26 12:47:05

Re: New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt

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