Currently, SNAFD is executing the navigation of
two missions for NASA´s Exploration Systems division. These are the MESSENGER mission to
Mercury and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Both missions have launched, with MESSENGER
underway since August 2, 2004, and New Horizons since January 19, 2006. KinetX is the only
organization besides Caltech´s JPL to navigate an interplanetary mission. On each mission,
KinetX works very closely with and for Mission Operations at the John Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory.
The MESSENGER mission is the first exploration of Mercury since Mariner 10, 25 years ago.
Mariner 10 discovered a magnetic field around Mercury, the only planet besides Earth of the
“rocky” planets — Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury — to possess such a field. In order to study
this and other aspects of the innermost planet of the solar system, the mission plan entails
sending MESSENGER into orbit around Mercury for one year. In order to avoid the immense gravity
of the Sun, MESSENGER will approach Mercury in a tangential manner, with several intermediate
planetary flybys, including Earth, Venus and Mercury itself. This approach, the most complex
trajectory ever devised for interplanetary travel, will allow MESSENGER to slip into orbit around
the Sun-baked planet. Click the following link to find out where MESSENGER is right now,
on its 7-year journey:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/whereis/index.php
New Horizons is the first-ever mission to Pluto and will study the composition
and atmosphere of Pluto and its moon, Charon. In addition, New Horizons intends to search for
Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) in a region beyond Pluto. KBOs that have been dragged into orbits
that pass very close to the Sun are thought by some astronomers to account for certain comets
that visit the earth periodically, such as Halley´s. New Horizons data is intended to tell
astronomers whether Pluto itself is perhaps a KBO that has been drawn out of the Kuiper Belt.
Click on the following link to find out where New Horizons is right now on its 9.5 year
journey:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php
