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Wednesday, April 9, 2003
This week NASA authorized the New
Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission to go forward with spacecraft and
ground system construction. New Horizons is led by the Southwest Research
Institute (SwRI) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
(APL). Pluto was discovered in 1930, and the first Kuiper Belt Object was
sighted in 1992. Since then, almost 1,000 more objects have been detected.
Neither Pluto nor Kuiper Belt Objects have ever been explored by spacecraft.
In July 2002, the National Research Council's Decadal Survey for Planetary
Science ranked the reconnaissance of Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt as its
highest priority for a new start mission in planetary science, citing the
fundamental scientific importance of understanding this region of the solar
system.
New Horizons is proceeding toward a January 2006 launch, with an arrival at
Pluto and its moon Charon as early as the summer of 2015. The 415-kg
(930-lb) spacecraft will characterize the global geology and geomorphology
of Pluto and Charon, map the surface compositions and temperatures of these
worlds, and study Pluto's unique atmosphere in detail. It will then visit
one or more icy, primordial bodies in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbits of
Neptune and Pluto, where it will make similar investigations. The spacecraft
carries seven sensor packages to carry out these studies.
Baseline plans for the New Horizons mission include use of a radioisotope
thermoelectric generator (RTG), which could supply over 200 watts of
electrical power for the spacecraft.
NASA selected new Horizons on November 29, 2001, after a competition between
industry-university teams who responded to a NASA request for proposals
released in January 2001. Since selection, the New Horizons mission and
science team have been working to complete both the detailed design of the
spacecraft, instruments, ground system, and mission profile and detailed
planning for the construction phase of the project.
NASA's authorization to build the New Horizons PKB mission follows an
in-depth review of the entire project by a NASA review team that included
more than two dozen experts in all facets of mission development and
management. The team worked almost six months before presenting its final
report to NASA Headquarters on March 3, 2003.
The principal investigator and leader of the New Horizons mission is Dr.
Alan Stern, the director of the SwRI Space Studies Department in Boulder,
Colo. "This is a truly historic step forward," he says. "For the first time,
NASA is undertaking a mission to explore Pluto-Charon and the distant
reaches of the solar system beyond Neptune. This kind of frontier
exploration is one of the important ways that NASA and the American space
program lead the world. Our team is proud of the authorization NASA has
given us to proceed and we're reminded by the responsibility on our
shoulders to make this mission a success."
SwRI President J. Dan Bates adds, "We are extremely pleased to be teaming
with NASA, APL, and our other partners on such an historic mission, where we
will literally move forward into the frontiers of space and scientific
research."
Upcoming project milestones for New Horizons include the selection of a
launch vehicle this summer, the start of spacecraft assembly in spring 2004,
and the beginning of integrated spacecraft and instrument testing in May
2004.
In addition to APL and SwRI, the New Horizons team includes Stanford
University, Ball Aerospace Corp., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission science team includes expertise from
the above institutions, as well as Lowell Observatory, NASA Ames Research
Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Washington University
(St. Louis), George Mason University, Johns Hopkins University, and the
University of Colorado.
More information on New Horizons can be found at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu.
More information on Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt can be found at
http://www.plutoportal.net.
