Skip to main content

New Horizons Spacecraft




New Horizons spacecraft is launched with primary mission to flyby Pluto and its moons and study them. But before we get into this blog, read the previous blog about the planet Pluto and get an overall idea about the planet.

Now that you have read about Pluto’s history, orbit and composition let’s get into this NASA’s New Frontiers Program- New Horizons.  New Horizon is space probe which was launched on January 19, 2006.It is engineered by Johns HopkinsUniversity Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest ResearchInstitute (SwRI), with a team led by S. Alan Stern. The name “New Horizons” was derived from Pluto’s moons, Nix and Hydra. The first letters of their names, N and H are initials of New Horizons.


MISSION:

The primary mission of New Horizons spacecraft is to study Pluto and study one or more Kuiper belt objects.  Originally the mission was to explore the undiscovered planets and objects in the solar system. This was when Pluto was still classified as a planet. But later when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet, Alan Stern and many members of New Horizons team disagreed. Due to this, the mission was changed to study the Pluto and its satellites. Alan Stern has even proposed a new definition of ‘planet’ to include Pluto as a planet again.

The goal is to understand formation of Pluto and its system, Kuiper belt formation.  This mission will attempt to answer questions like: What is Pluto’s atmosphere made of? How to solar particles interact with its atmosphere? What does Pluto’s surface look like? And many others.

DESIGN:

The design of New Horizons space craft is bit complicated. It has a giant piano-like structure. It has propulsion and attitude control to stabilize the spins (two axis spin and three axis spin). It has a radioisotopethermoelectric generator which provides it with power. LORRI imager is responsible for sending images back to earth. It is accompanied with Ralph telescope that make up New Horizons' Pluto Exploration Remote Sensing Investigation (PERSI). Both this photographic instruments sent back the images of Pluto and other objects.

ACHIEVEMENTS:

New Horizons spacecraft approached Pluto in January 25, 2015. Till this date, it has sent many images of the target. The first image which NASA released was of Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon. Later it released photos of Nix and Hydra. These images helped to understand their surfaces and atmosphere.

Now the team has moved on to its next target: the Kuiper belt objects.  The team discovered a mysterious object known as 2014 MU69, in 2014. This object is blocking light from the background star, which is known as occultation. 2014 MU69 is void of external disturbances and collisions. It is also referred to as ‘cold classic object’. Scientists assume that it is the oldest object in the solar system. It will help us to reveal the formation of solar system. The space probe will reveal photos in 2019.

New horizons mission will help us to fulfill various objectives: it will help us to understand the geological structure of Pluto and Charon, tell us more about their atmosphere and how solar particles interact with it. Not only this but it will also help us to know more about the Kuiper belt objects which will help us to understand the formation of solar system. There are many questions which will be answered by this mission. We just have to wait for it to make more such discoveries!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Super Void

As mysterious as it can get, Universe has always been a place for strange and weird things. Now, scientists have a “Super-Void” in space which is missing galaxies! So before we get in to the topic, first let’s discuss what is “Void” According to Wikipedia, Voids or Cosmic Voids , as they are called, are vast spaces between galaxy filaments in the universe, which has few or 0 galaxies. Galaxy filaments are largest know structures in the universe, which have thread-like structures. They form boundaries between voids in space. These voids have very less density of matter that is considered for typical observable universe. Voids are believed to be formed in Big Bang, followed by massive collapse its mass and compressed by Baryonic matter . After Big Bang, there were lots of areas with high and low densities, which were changing rapidly. The regions with high density collapsed rapidly under gravity eventually causing foam-like structure of cosmic web of voids. Voids loc...
1 comment
Read more

Binary Black Hole

In early 2016, a group of scientists at LIGO observatory made an incredible announcement-detection of gravitational waves.   Gravitational waves are ripples in curvature of space-time. Till then, gravitational waves were considered as a theoretical concept.   This discovery is not momentous just because gravitational waves were discovered but also because nobody had ever seen two supermassive black holes orbiting so close to each other. This system is called Binary Black Hole (BBH). BINARY BLACK HOLE:- Binary black hole is a system which consists of two super massive black holes orbiting close to each other. Like ordinary black holes, BBH is also divided into stellar (black holes formed by gravitationalcollapse of a massive star) black holes. For many years, proving the existence of binary black hole was difficult because of nature of black holes itself and limited detection methods. When two black holes orbit close to each other, they give out immense amoun...
1 comment
Read more