I only stumbled upon this mission from NASA over the weekend. The synopsis from the New York Times made it pretty intriguing.
Firstly it’s the first attempt to explore the farthest known planet Pluto which even the Hubble Telescope can’t get clear images of. Secondly, New Horizonswill keep on going to find out better details of the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system.
The coolest thing about this mission though is how quickly the probe will arrive at Pluto, 9-10 years. So? Well, last year’s Huygens landing took seven-and-a-half years to happen due to it piggybacking on Cassini and that probe needed four gravity assists (sling-shooting off of Earth and Jupiter once and Venus twice). New Horizons will be launched from Earth at 58,000 kilometers per hour with just its rockets. That translates into it passing the moon in NINE HOURS (the Apollo missions took two to three days to arrive). It will arrive at Jupiter in 13 months to receive its only gravity assist for a slingshot out to Pluto and its known moon Charon. Recently, astromoners have found two additional moons but then again, the Hubble Telescope has difficulty with objects that small at such a distance (almost six billion kilometers from the Earth).
I hope the probe makes it since it will only check in once a week and go through a diagnostic once a year to conserve power. Previous probes Pioneer 10 and 11 both stopped sending messages in 2003 and 1995 respectively. The two Voyager probes are over 10 billion kilometers from the Sun and still hanging in there, probably working beyond their original purposes.
Fingers crossed this will go well.
Jan. 17, 2006 Update Due to wind, the launch was scrapped today and NASA will try again tomorrow afternoon. Pluto is a few billion kilometers away and takes over two centuries to orbit the Sun, so the launch window is pretty forgiving. I think Jupiter’s position is the trickier one.
Jan. 19, 2006 Update The launch finally happened during my lunch hour. Thankfully it got past the 40-second danger zone that its plutonium-based power source would make part of Florida a radioactive mess. I know it’s just hardened stuff decaying slowly to make heat but it is still dangerous. Currently, the probe is hurtling away past the Moon by 10 pm CST. After the Moon, it’s onward to Jupite in 13 months.