Laurie61
Well-Known Forumite
New Horizons spacecraft is a week from returning the first-ever close up images and scientific observations of distant Pluto and its system of large and small moons.
Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground based and Earth orbiting space observations, but we've never studied Pluto up close and personal, In an unprecedented flyby this July, our knowledge of what the Pluto system is really like will expand exponentially.
The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away - more than nine years and three billion miles - than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. Its flyby of Pluto and its system of at least five moons on July 14 will complete the initial reconnaissance of the classical solar system. This mission also opens the door to an entirely new "third" zone of mysterious small planets and planetary building blocks in the Kuiper Belt, a large area with numerous objects beyond Neptune's orbit.
The flyby caps a five-decade-long era of reconnaissance that began with Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, and continued through first looks at Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s and Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.
Reaching this third zone of our solar system - beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer gas giants - has been a space science priority for years. In the early 2000s the National Academy of Sciences ranked the exploration of the Kuiper Belt - and particularly Pluto and its largest moon, Charon - as its top priority planetary mission for the coming decade.
New Horizons - a compact, lightweight, powerfully equipped probe packing the most advanced suite of cameras and spectrometers ever sent on a first reconnaissance mission - is NASA's answer to that call.
"This is pure exploration; we're going to turn points of light into a planet and a system of moons before your eyes!" said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "New Horizons is flying to Pluto — the biggest, brightest and most complex of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. This 21st century encounter is going to be an exploration bonanza unparalleled in anticipation since the storied missions of Voyager in the 1980s."
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150706
Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground based and Earth orbiting space observations, but we've never studied Pluto up close and personal, In an unprecedented flyby this July, our knowledge of what the Pluto system is really like will expand exponentially.
The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away - more than nine years and three billion miles - than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. Its flyby of Pluto and its system of at least five moons on July 14 will complete the initial reconnaissance of the classical solar system. This mission also opens the door to an entirely new "third" zone of mysterious small planets and planetary building blocks in the Kuiper Belt, a large area with numerous objects beyond Neptune's orbit.
The flyby caps a five-decade-long era of reconnaissance that began with Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, and continued through first looks at Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s and Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.
Reaching this third zone of our solar system - beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer gas giants - has been a space science priority for years. In the early 2000s the National Academy of Sciences ranked the exploration of the Kuiper Belt - and particularly Pluto and its largest moon, Charon - as its top priority planetary mission for the coming decade.
New Horizons - a compact, lightweight, powerfully equipped probe packing the most advanced suite of cameras and spectrometers ever sent on a first reconnaissance mission - is NASA's answer to that call.
"This is pure exploration; we're going to turn points of light into a planet and a system of moons before your eyes!" said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "New Horizons is flying to Pluto — the biggest, brightest and most complex of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. This 21st century encounter is going to be an exploration bonanza unparalleled in anticipation since the storied missions of Voyager in the 1980s."
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150706
