posted 11-04-2005 08:00 PM               

This thread is intended for comments and questions regarding the New Horizons mission and the updates published under the topic: NASA's New Horizons to Pluto.

New Horizons will cross the span of the solar system – in record time – and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon, Charon, in 2015. The seven science instruments on the piano-sized probe will shed light on the bodies' surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres.

It will mark humankind's first voyage into the "third zone" of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt, populated by smaller, icy objects different than the rocky inner planets or the outer gas giants.

posted 12-21-2005 09:23 AM               

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.

posted 12-21-2005 11:01 AM               

A Florida quarter is prepared for installation on the New Horizons spacecraft in Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The new quarter, engraved with the "Gateway to Discovery" design, will accompany New Horizons on its 3-billion-mile journey to the planet Pluto and its moon, Charon. Although appropriate for the mission to carry the coin from the state that symbolizes space exploration, it will also serve a practical purpose: scientists are using the quarter as a spin-balance weight.

posted 03-15-2007 01:40 AM               

New Horizons Mission to Begin Pluto Encounter April 12th, 2015 in Salute to Early Space Explorers

Yuri's Night is proud to announce that New Horizons, the NASA spacecraft currently en route to the ninth planet, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt, will begin its final encounter with the Pluto system on April 12, 2015.

The year 2015 will be the 54th anniversary of the spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the Earth and the 34th anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. Each April 12, Yuri's Night holds parties around the planet to commemorate these occasions. New Horizons mission PI Dr. Alan Stern will be present at the [URL=Yuri's Night Washington, D.C. party to talk more about the mission.

"We're proud to be working with Yuri's Night to excite people about the past, present, and future of space exploration," Stern said. "New Horizons is headed to the frontier of our solar system, 3 billion miles away. We hope that our collaboration with Yuri's Night will bring together space enthusiasts of all types to communicate to the public the importance of outer space."

New Horizons is a NASA New Frontiers mission managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Launched on January 19, 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft is due to pass Jupiter on February 28, 2007, en route to photographing and examining Pluto and other objects in the Kuiper Belt. Currently traveling at over 51,000 miles per hour, New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched. Yet, it will require eight more years to reach planet Pluto, which will be more than 3 billion miles away from the Sun when New Horizons arrives. After its Pluto-system encounter, New Horizons will continue on to explore the Kuiper Belt, then escape the solar system and fly into interstellar space.

The first spacecraft to explore Pluto and its system of moons, New Horizons may also be the last for a while. As Pluto moves away from the Sun, its atmosphere will freeze and condense on its surface, making photography and other measurements difficult. Pluto will not be as close to the Sun as it is now for nearly another 250 years. New Horizons is carrying a compact disc with the names of more than 430,000 people from around the world who are interested in the project, the first-ever planetary flight experiment developed by undergraduate students, and the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

About Yuri's Night
Yuri's Night is a program of the Space Generation, an organization dedicated to engaging and developing the next generation of leaders, using space to make a difference on Earth and sharing their passion for space with the public. Since 2001, each year Yuri's Night has held parties of all sizes in celebration of Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space. Parties of all sizes have been held on all seven continents, including Antarctica; this year's festivities currently involve 37 events in 10 countries and counting.

posted 06-15-2014 10:54 AM               

Got my longest distance Father's Day call ever today, New Horizons rang in from 3 billion miles away to say she's woken up from hibernation!

This summer's hibernation wakeup will be a particularly busy operation. In addition to the complete checkout of the spacecraft's primary and backup systems, and similar checkouts of all seven scientific instruments, we'll also conduct our first optical navigation campaign to home in on Pluto, track the spacecraft to refine its orbit, do a host of instrument calibrations needed before encounter, carry out a small but important course correction, and gather some cruise science.

A highlight of that cruise science will be imaging Pluto and its satellites to study their light curves (that is, how the brightness of each body varies as it rotates). This can be done from Earth, but New Horizons has the advantage of seeing Pluto and its moons from a different angle than can ever be observed from Earth or Earth orbit, providing some new information about the physical properties of the surfaces of these bodies. One outcome from these data, which will be taken in July, will be a rotation movie showing Charon orbiting Pluto - viewed from a distance about 10 times closer to the Pluto system than we are here on Earth.

Another milestone on our journey happens in late August, when we cross the orbit of Neptune. That event for New Horizons will occur on Aug. 25 - which by cosmic coincidence, not design - is the exact 25th anniversary of Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune in 1989. After that, we'll be in "Pluto space!"

posted 07-14-2014 08:48 AM               

Planetary scientist Alan Stern is counting down the days — just 365 of them now. He has spent the past 8 1/2 years waiting for the New Horizons spacecraft to make a close encounter with Pluto. Next year, on July 14, the spacecraft will reach its destination.

"Not only did we choose the date, by the way, we chose the hour and the minute. And we're on track," says Stern, the principal investigator for NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission.

posted 07-24-2014 09:34 AM               

BEHOLD! Pluto and Charon (~17,000 km apart) seen Monday [July 23] by our LORRI camera. We're still over 400 million km away!

posted 04-08-2015 10:32 AM               

We the Geeks: Journey to Pluto

In the farthest reaches of our solar system, nearly 3 billion miles away, lies the small, icy body that has inspired wonder for generations of astronomers since its discovery 85 years ago. Pluto, a dwarf planet, is so far away that it takes nearly 250 years to orbit the Sun. This summer, we will come to know Pluto in infinitely more detail than ever before.

NASA's New Horizons mission launched into space in 2006 and has been en route to Pluto for nine years. In July 2015, it will reach its destination, billions of miles away, for the first-ever close view of the dwarf planet and its moons. New Horizons will use an array of instruments to take pictures and answer basic questions about the temperature and composition of Pluto's atmosphere, its surface and geology, and how it interacts with the constant stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun.

Looking ahead to this exciting close encounter, the White House hosted "We the Geeks: Journey to Pluto" on April 9. They talked to experts from NASA's New Horizons team to learn about the mission and the exciting discoveries scientists hope to make about Pluto.

The panel of experts included:

• John Grunsfeld, astronaut, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate
  
• Hal Weaver, Project Scientist for New Horizons
  
• Jamey Szalay, David James, and Tiffany Finley, current and former members of the New Horizons Student Dust Counter instrument team
  
• Gabe Rogers, New Horizons Guidance and Control Engineer

posted 04-14-2015 01:48 PM               

The New Horizons team also today detailed when imagery will be delivered to Earth. The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla has an excellent overview and schedule of imagery transmissions here.

On Sunday, July 12, New Horizons will transmit the last of its optical navigation data. These images will have lower resolution than the images we have already received from Dawn at Ceres. Then, on Sunday and Monday, July 12 and 13, there will be a series of four "Fail Safe" downlinks. These are designed to return a minimum set of data from all instruments, just in case New Horizons does not survive the flyby. A last downlink ending overnight Monday July 13, called "E-Health 1," will include one last pre-closest approach photo of Pluto.

Then there is a nail-biting 24-hour period of waiting while New Horizons concentrates on flyby science and does not communicate with Earth, followed by the much-anticipated beep of the "Phone Home" downlink on Tuesday night, July 14. Following closest approach, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 15 and 16, there will be a series of "First Look" downlinks containing a sampling of key science data. Another batch of data will arrive in the "Early High Priority" downlinks over the subsequent weekend, July 17-20. Then there will be a hiatus of 8 weeks before New Horizons turns to systematically downlinking all its data.

...for nearly two months, until September 14, New Horizons will switch to near-real-time downlinking of data from instruments that generate low data volumes (like SWAP and PEPSSI) while it transmits just housekeeping information for all of the rest of the data. No new images will arrive on the ground during this time.

On September 14, New Horizons will begin downlinking a "browse" version of the entire Pluto data set, in which all images will be lossily compressed. It will take about 10 weeks to get that data set to the ground. There will be compression artifacts, but we'll see the entire data set. Then, around November 16, New Horizons will begin to downlink the entire science data set losslessly compressed. It will take a year to complete that process.

posted 04-14-2015 09:28 PM               

For Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune, NASA coupled the Deep Space Network with the Parkes radio observatory and the 27 25-meter dishes at the NRAO's Very Large Array.

As Emily Lakdawalla describes here, New Horizons' signal can only be detected by the DSN's 70-meter dishes, but can cache much more data than Voyager to transmit over time. As such...

...it takes 42 minutes to return one LORRI photo to Earth. Most communications sessions last about eight hours. That's eleven images per communications session. And that assumes that New Horizons is transmitting only LORRI data, which it's not; there are other science instruments and spacecraft housekeeping data, too. The Deep Space Network has only three 70-meter dishes, and there is a lot of competition for time on them; New Horizons is lucky to get one communications session per day. And while New Horizons is pointing its dish at Earth, it can't point at anything else, including Pluto. It has to choose between communicating and taking data.

posted 06-12-2015 09:52 AM               

The Year of Pluto

New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System

New Horizons is the first mission to the Kuiper Belt, a gigantic zone of icy bodies and mysterious small objects orbiting beyond Neptune. This region also is known as the "third" zone of our solar system, beyond the inner rocky planets and outer gas giants. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Year of Pluto - NASA New Horizons is a one hour documentary which takes on the hard science and gives us answers to how the mission came about and why it matters. Interviews with Dr. James Green, John Spencer, Fran Bagenal, Mark Showalter and others share how New Horizons will answer many questions.

New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

posted 06-12-2015 11:15 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Blackarrow:
I wonder whether we will see the best New Horizon images...

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posted 06-13-2015 02:09 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by alcyone:
This will be just as exciting as Voyager at Neptune/Triton, make no mistake.

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posted 06-17-2015 10:03 AM               

New Horizons

On July 14th, NASA's New Horizons mission will make its closest approach to the Pluto system, completing the first reconnaissance of the solar system's major planets, begun over 50 years ago by NASA. With the completion of the Pluto flyby by New Horizons next month, NASA will have completed successful missions to every planet from Mercury to Pluto.

The NSS recognizes the historic culmination of this era of first planetary reconnaissance, for which the United States will be forever inscribed in history.

To celebrate, the NSS commissioned a short video film, called "New Horizons," which is being released today. "New Horizons" was directed and produced by Erik Wernquist, whose video "Wanderers," looking to the future of solar system exploration by humans, created a viral sensation last year. NSS member and New Horizons mission leader Alan Stern served as advisor the video. The video was funded for NSS by contributions to NSS made by New Horizons mission partners Aerojet Rockedyne, Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, and United Launch Alliance.

posted 06-17-2015 05:51 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Sure, except for the imagery and science data collection instruments...

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posted 06-18-2015 07:37 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by onesmallstep:
I find it hard to believe it was better in the 70s and 80s — even with the Voyager, Pioneer and Mariner missions — as far as image release was concerned.

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For some of us it is not a matter of belief. We remember it. True, we didn't have news sources like CNN or the internet, but the images were immediately available to the news media to show on regular news broadcasts. Voyager 2 flying by Neptune was a big news story (helped by the fact that Neptune looked quite Earth-like) and the encounter images were available for the public as soon as NASA acquired them. Obviously, cleaned up computer-enhanced versions took longer, but the raw images of Neptune were good enough to let the public participate in the encounter in a real and memorable way. I quote from JPL's "Voyager Bulletin" No. 93 (dated 2 days after the Neptune encounter):

"In an historic flyby witnessed by millions of people around the world, thanks to live TV broadcasts of incoming images, Voyager 2 sent back extraordinary pictures of storms in Neptune's atmosphere, cloud shadows, six new moons, several new rings, and icy Triton."

I still have VHS recordings (now on DVD) of TV news broadcasts showing a stream of raw Voyager images appearing on monitor screens. Even the unenhanced raw images showed dramatic views which captured the imagination of the public

Sadly, it seems unlikely that the Pluto encounter will have the same sense of immediacy or the same sense of public participation, in spite of 24-hour news channels and the internet. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I will be.

posted 06-19-2015 05:52 PM               

As for the flyby, sense of immediacy and public interest, it should be noted that there was tremendous public engagement when NEAR descended to the surface of Eros, even though there was no accompanying imagery. The intrigue was based on whether the probe would survive or not.

posted 07-01-2015 09:15 PM               

After a final deliberation, the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature and the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, in charge of naming dwarf planets and their systems, agreed to change Cerberus to Kerberos — the Greek spelling of the word, to avoid confusion with an asteroid called 1865 Cerberus. According to mythology, Cerberus — or Kerberos in Greek — was a many-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld.

posted 07-04-2015 05:11 PM            

Second, the release of information on encounter day and beyond. This will be a long and painfully slow business. I'm still not sure why. A few comparisons between Voyager 2 in 1989 and New Horizons in 2015

• Transmission time from Neptune in August 1989: 4 hours, 6 minutes
  
• Transmission time from Pluto in July, 2015: 4 hours, 25 minutes
  
• Voyager 2 transmitter: 25 watts
  
• New Horizons: 12 watts
  
• Transmission data rate from Neptune: 21.6 kilobits per second
  
• Transmission data from Pluto: 2 kilobits per second.

posted 07-04-2015 05:51 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Blackarrow:
My technological knowledge is too limited to understand why the data transmission rate from Pluto is so low.

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To boost Voyager's transmission rate, NASA augmented the Deep Space Network's 70-meter antenna with two 34-meter and 27 25-meter antennas. That setup was necessary because Voyager had to transmit all of its data in real time. Its onboard storage was limited to a tape recorder.

(As an aside, one limitation of Voyager's real-time transmission was that it could not return the data needed for high-resolution color mosaics of Neptune.)

New Horizons has onboard solid state memory to record data, enabling it to collect and return more data. Voyager's images were 800 pixels square; New Horizons LORRI detector is 1024 pixels square.

New Horizons can almost double its transmission rate by using its two Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers (TWTAs) to boost its signal strength, but the power requirements to do so require shutting down science instruments. The mission team will make this trade off to clear the data buffer before the flyby to make sure the spacecraft can record as much information as possible.

One last note, New Horizons can only point its dish in one direction at a time: it can only collect data about Pluto or transmit the data back to Earth, not both. And so throughout the flyby, the New Horizons' dish will be focused at Pluto to maximize data collection.

posted 07-04-2015 09:52 PM               

The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of Saturday (July 4) that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.