NASA's Mission To Pluto

Latest News - 25th August, 2008

Here is the latest position of the Pluto probe, which was launched on 19th January, 2006.  The gravity assist at Jupiter took place on 28th February, 2007 and the spacecraft is now on the long trek to Pluto, at the edges of the solar system.  It is currently 33.5% of the way to Pluto.  Latest News.

Mission Milestones
February 2007 Jupiter gravity assist
March 2007 - June 2015 Interplanetary cruise
July 2015 Pluto-Charon encounter
2016-2020 Kuiper Belt objects encounter
NASA’s "New Horizons" spacecraft - the first ever mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt (a distant region of ancient, icy, rocky objects at the edge of the solar system) - successfully launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida on 19th January, 2006.  The spacecraft is certain to send a significant amount of new information back to Earth.  The huge distance to Pluto means that New Horizons is not expected to arrive at its destination until July 2015.

Launching a spacecraft to Pluto was not an easy task for NASA, due to budget cuts, start-and-stop mission planning and hardware building.  But these problems were overcome, the craft was assembled, and successfully launched on this extraordinary expedition to the edge of the solar system.  The cost of the mission, including the launch vehicle and operations through the Pluto-Charon encounter, will be roughly $650 million.

The spacecraft was launched using the New Horizons booster, a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 first stage with five strap-on solid rocket boosters, a powerful Centaur second stage, topped by a STAR 48B solid propellant-fuelled third stage.

The New Horizons spacecraft is roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) across and weighs roughly 1,025 pounds (465 kilograms)—about half a ton—when loaded with fuel.  Power Source will be a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), the same type which powered (and still powers) the Voyager spacecraft, back in the 1970's.  Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope has observed that Pluto may have not one, but three moons, which adds to the mysteries New Horizons is expected to resolve.

Suite of seven instruments
The first 13 months after launch were taken up with spacecraft and instrument checkouts, instrument calibrations, trajectory correction manoeuvres.  Spacecraft operators also rehearsed their Pluto encounter as the craft passed Jupiter between February 25 and March 2, 2007.

Data sent from New Horizons is being received on Earth through NASA’s Deep Space Network, dispatched onward to the spacecraft’s Mission Operations Centre at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. APL manages the mission for NASA and built the New Horizons spacecraft. A radio signal moving at the speed of light takes about four hours to reach Pluto from Earth.

New Horizon carries a suite of seven scientific instruments:

  1. Alice is an ultraviolet spectrometer used for measuring gas composition
  2. Ralph combines an infrared spectrometer (LEISA) for mapping surface composition with a colour 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.

Nuclear-powered probe
New Horizons is outfitted with a compact nuclear power system.  The hardware converts the heat generated from the natural decay of radioactive fuel into electricity.  The RTG consists of two major elements: a heat source that contains plutonium dioxide in the form of ceramic pellets and a set of solid-state thermocouples that convert the plutonium’s heat energy to electricity.  Like any NASA mission designed to use an RTG, New Horizons has undergone extensive, multi-agency safety and risk reviews throughout its development.
Latest News
New Horizons came to within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on Feb. 28, using the planet's gravity to trim three years from its travel time to Pluto. For several weeks before and after this closest approach, the piano-sized robotic probe trained its seven cameras and sensors on Jupiter and its four largest moons, storing data from nearly 700 observations on its digital recorders and gradually sending that information back to Earth. About 70 percent of the expected 34 gigabits of data has come back so far, radioed to NASA's largest antennas over more than 600 million miles. This activity confirmed the successful testing of the instruments and operating software the spacecraft will use at Pluto.
The New Horizons Jupiter encounter is under way!  The spacecraft received its "slingshot" velocity boost on 28th February and has picked up another 9,000mph as a result, making its new velocity more than 52,000mph.  The spacecraft has begun sending back pictures from the Jupiter encounter, including this shot of Io.  Also in the flight plan: the first-ever trip down the long "tail" of Jupiter's magnetic field, which extends tens of millions of miles beyond the planet.  
The New Horizons team got a faint glimpse of the mission’s distant, main planetary target when one of the spacecraft’s telescopic cameras spotted Pluto for the first time.  The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took the pictures during an optical navigation test on Sept. 21-24, and stored them on the spacecraft’s data recorder until their recent transmission back to Earth. Information source: NASA Website

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