In the News
Published January 23, 2006
By Michael Buckley, Applied Physics Laboratory
The John Hopkins University Gazette
Liftoff! New Horizon is Pluto-bound
The APL-built New Horizons spacecraft lifts off from Cape Canaveral on its 3 billion-mile journey to Pluto. Photo by: NASA/KSC
The first mission to distant planet Pluto is under way
after the launch Jan. 19 of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Florida.
New Horizons - designed and built by the Applied Physics Laboratory - roared into the
afternoon sky aboard a powerful Atlas V rocket at 2 p.m. It separated from its solid-fuel
kick motor 44 minutes, 53 seconds after launch, and mission controllers at APL in Laurel,
Md., received the first radio signals from New Horizons a little more than five minutes
later. The radio communications, sent through NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in
Canberra, Australia, confirmed to controllers that the spacecraft was healthy and ready
to begin initial operations.
The launch, originally scheduled for Jan. 17, had been twice delayed by adverse weather
conditions.
"This is the gateway to a long, exciting journey," said Glen Fountain, New
Horizons project manager from APL. "The team has worked hard for the past four
years to get the spacecraft ready for the voyage to Pluto and beyond, to places we've
never seen up close. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, in the tradition of the
Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager missions, to set out for first looks in our solar
system."
The 1,054-pound, piano-sized spacecraft is the fastest ever launched, speeding away
from Earth at approximately 36,000 miles per hour on a trajectory that will take it
more than 3 billion miles toward its primary science target. New Horizons will zip
past Jupiter for a gravity assist and science studies in February 2007 and then conduct
the first close-up, in-depth study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015. As part of a
potential extended mission, the spacecraft would then examine one or more additional
objects in the Kuiper Belt, the region of ancient, icy, rocky bodies (including Pluto)
far beyond Neptune's orbit.
"The United States of America has just made history by launching the first spacecraft
to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal
investigator, from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "No other nation has
this capability. This is the kind of exploration that forefathers, like Lewis and Clark
200 years ago this year, made a trademark of our nation."
Over the next several weeks, mission operators at APL will place the spacecraft in
flight mode, check out its critical operating systems and perform small propulsive
maneuvers to refine its path toward Jupiter. Following that, among other operations,
the team will begin checking and commissioning most of the seven science instruments.
After the Jupiter encounter - during which New Horizons will train its science
instruments on the large planet and its moons - the spacecraft will "sleep" in
electronic hibernation for much of the cruise to Pluto. Operators will turn off all
but the most critical electronic systems and check in with the spacecraft once a
year to assess the critical systems, calibrate the instruments and perform course
corrections, if necessary.
Between the in-depth checkouts, New Horizons will send back a
beacon signal each week to give operators an instant read on spacecraft health. The entire
spacecraft, drawing electricity from a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator, operates
on less power than a pair of 100-watt household light bulbs.
New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program of medium-class
spacecraft exploration projects. Stern leads the mission and science team as principal
investigator. APL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and is
operating the spacecraft in flight. The mission team also includes Ball Aerospace
Corp., the Boeing Co., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Stanford University, KinetX, Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp., University of
Colorado, U.S. Department of Energy and a number of other firms, NASA centers and
university partners. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center was
responsible for the launch.