Encounter! 2015 - Welcome to the God of the Underworld. Image courtesy of NASA. (Click to enlarge)
The plan: Brush past the moon after only 9 hours, swing past Jupiter for a slingshot effect to final target, moving at about 47,000 miles per hour (about 21 kilometers per second). Image courtesy of NASA. (Click to enlarge)
The rocket taking the probe is the fastest yet, the probe is powered by a 20 lb nuclear battery of active plutonium-238 to generate 200 watts of electricity. Image courtesy of NASA. (Click to enlarge)
This is all we know about our destination: This picture shows the highest surface resolution so far recovered! Writes SpaceWeather.com: Pluto's brown color is thought dominated by frozen methane deposits metamorphosed by faint but energetic sunlight. The dark band below Pluto's equator is seen to have rather complex coloring, however, indicating that some unknown mechanisms may have affected Pluto's surface. Credit: Eliot Young (SwRI) et al., NASA and SpaceWeather.com.
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New Horizons to Pluto
Posted: Jan 17, 2006 11:34 pm EST
(Pythom.com) Imagine you flip through a space travel brochure and catch the next flight to one of the destinations offered: A small planet, rotating in the opposite direction to the other planets, shadowed by a ghostly, giant moon. Once in the hotel you check the view: Patches of white ice and black tar gleam in faint light. You look up - the sky is frozen solid. When you open the window; poisonous gases stream inside your master suite. You gasp and fight to stay where you are, but the planet's gravity is too weak - you float out and vanish into the termination shock.
Welcome to Pluto - the God of the Underworld.
20 lb nuclear battery to travel in darkness
Vacation in hell - who'd want to go there? NASA does, and take off is scheduled tomorrow, Jan 18 2006 13:16:00 EST. New Horizons is the first mission to the last planet - the initial reconnaissance of Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt - sent out to explore the mysterious worlds at the edge of our solar system.
Forget solar panels when traveling in this darkness; the probe is run by nuclear power. A 20 lb nuclear battery is charged by active plutonium-238 generating 200 watts of electricity.
The rocket taking the probe is the fastest yet - it will brush past the moon after only 9 hours, moving about 47,000 miles per hour (about 21 kilometers per second). And yet, it will take the $550m mission 9 years to reach Pluto. The first 13 months will include rehearsals for a Jupiter encounter, scheduled early 2007. In a gravity boost, a slingshot orbit around Jupiter will catapult the probe towards Pluto. Arrival via Jupiter: 2015-2017; direct to Pluto: 2018-2020.
"At the earliest, current 1st graders will see New Horizons arrive at Pluto during the summer before 12th grade!" says NASA.
Plans for an extended mission include one to two encounters of Kuiper Belt Objects, ranging from about 25 to 55 miles (40 to 90 kilometers) in diameter. The Kuiper Belt is thought to be the source of most short-period comets - those with orbits shorter than 200 years
Generally, New Horizons seeks to understand where Pluto and Charon "fit in" with the other objects in the solar system. We currently classify the planets into groups. Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury are the "terrestrial" planets, which are mostly rocky objects. In contrast, the "gas giant" planets, which include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are dominated by thick, molecular hydrogen atmospheres.
Pluto and Charon belong to a third category that could be called "ice dwarfs." They have solid surfaces but, unlike the terrestrial planets, a significant portion of their mass is icy material (such as frozen water, carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide).
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