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| NEW HORIZONS |
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This mission flies to the last official planet of our solar system and beyond. The mission planners hope after the rendezvous with Pluto to continue the mission with a fly-by of some Kuiper Belt objects. The space probe will start on January 17, 2006 with an Atlas V rocket. As a result of the large distance the space probe need nine years. Between February and March 2007 the space probe will fly by Jupiter the largest planet in our solar system to get a gravity boost. The primary scientific objectives are to characterize the global geology and morphology and map the surface composition of Pluto and Charon, and study the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate. Pluto's moon, Charon, is half the size of Pluto and built with him a binary system (in October 2005 astronomers detect with the Hubble Space Telescope possible two new moons of Pluto). Although binary planets are thought to be common in the galaxy, as are binary stars, no spacecraft has yet explored one. New Horizons will be the first mission to a binary object of any type. Mission overview: The payload includes seven instruments: Ralph's main objectives are to obtain high resolution color maps and surface composition maps of the surfaces of Pluto and Charon. The instrument has two separate channels: the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) and the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). A single telescope with a 3-inch (6-centimeter) aperture collects and focuses the light used in both channels. Alice is an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer that will probe the atmospheric composition of Pluto. A "spectrometer" is an instrument that separates light into its constituent wavelengths, like a prism, only better. An "imaging spectrometer" both separates the different wavelengths of light and produces an image of the target at each wavelength. REX is an acronym for "radio experiment," - it is really just a small printed circuit board, containing sophisticated electronics, integrated into the New Horizons radio telecommunications system. All communication with New Horizons, including the downlink of science data, takes place through the radio package, which makes it critical to mission success.
The instrument that provides the highest spatial resolution on New Horizons is LORRI - short for Long Range Reconnaissance Imager - which consists of a telescope with a 8.2-inch (20.8-centimeter) aperture that focuses visible light onto a charge coupled device (CCD). LORRI has a very simple design; there are no filters or moving parts. Near the time of closest approach, LORRI will take images of Pluto's surface at football-field sized resolution, resolving features approximately 100 yards or 100 meters across. The Solar Wind Analyzer around Pluto (SWAP) instrument will measure charged particles from the solar wind near Pluto to determine whether Pluto has a magnetosphere and how fast its atmosphere is escaping. Another plasma-sensing instrument, the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Investigation (PEPSSI), will search for neutral atoms that escape Pluto's atmosphere and subsequently become charged by their interaction with the solar wind. The last scientific instrument on New Horizons is an Education and Public Outreach project. The Student Dust Counter (SDC) will count and measure the sizes of dust particles along New Horizons' entire trajectory, which covers regions of interplanetary space never before sampled. Such dust particles are created by comets shedding material and Kuiper Belt Objects colliding with one another. The SDC is managed and was built primarily by students at the University of Colorado in Boulder, with supervision from professional space scientists. last update: 02/14/2008 |
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