Post by Bozur on Jan 26, 2006 2:41:02 GMT -5
NASA Launches Spacecraft on the First Mission to Pluto
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: January 20, 2006
NASA launched the first space mission to Pluto yesterday as a powerful rocket hurled the New Horizons spacecraft on a nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to the edge of the solar system.
Gary I. Rothstein/European Pressphoto Agency
The launch of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
As it soared toward a 2007 rendezvous with Jupiter, whose powerful gravitational field will slingshot it on its way to Pluto, mission managers said radio communications confirmed that the 1,054-pound craft was in good health.
The $700 million mission began when a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket rose from a launching pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 2 p.m., almost an hour later than planned because of low clouds that obscured a clear view of the flight path by tracking cameras.
"We have ignition and liftoff of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on a decadelong voyage to visit the planet Pluto and then beyond," declared Bruce Buckingham, NASA's launching commentator.
Less than an hour later, all three stages of the booster rocket worked as planned, and the spacecraft separated from them and sprinted away toward deep space. The robot ship sped away at about 36,000 miles per hour, the fastest flight of any spacecraft sent from Earth, allowing it to pass the Moon in about nine hours.
"This is a historic day," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., the mission's principal scientist and team leader.
Speaking at a news conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Dr. Stern said the timing assured that the New Horizons would arrive for its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015 - the 50th anniversary of the first flyby of Mars by the Mariner 4, the mission that began the exploration of the planets.
Yesterday's liftoff also paid homage to Pluto's discoverer, the astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, who in 1930 became the only American to find a planet in the solar system. (He died at 90, in 1997.) His widow, Patricia Tombaugh, 93, and other family members were present at the cape, and some of his remains were among the commemorative items aboard the spacecraft.
"Some of Clyde's ashes are on their way to Pluto today," Dr. Stern said.
The New Horizons is to reach Jupiter's gravitational field in 13 months. The trip to Pluto will take eight more years, most of which the craft will spend in electronic "hibernation" to save power and wear on the equipment needed for its seven experiments.
The New Horizons is powered by a small plutonium-fired electric generator. Its instruments include three cameras, for visible-light, infrared and ultraviolet images, and three spectrometers to study the composition and temperatures of Pluto's thin atmosphere and surface features.
It also carries a University of Colorado dust counter, the first experiment to fly on a planetary mission that is entirely designed and operated by students. This is the only experiment that will not hibernate during the mission.
In addition to the two-hour delay, the launching was postponed twice in two days - on Tuesday by strong winds at the cape and on Wednesday by a storm that caused a power failure at the spacecraft's control center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Mission planners had until Feb. 14 to launch the mission this year, but only until the end of this month to use the gravity boost from Jupiter, which will shorten the trip to Pluto by five years.
Once near its target, the New Horizons is to conduct about five months of studies, including a closest-approach dash that takes it within 6,200 miles of Pluto's surface and 16,800 miles from the planet's large moon, Charon. The craft will also study two smaller moons found late last year by the Hubble Space Telescope and any new features discovered while it is on its way, scientists said.
The mission is to continue past Pluto, possibly visiting large objects in the Kuiper Belt, an outer zone of the solar system that includes Pluto. The belt is made up of thousands of icy, rocky objects that include comets and small planets. Scientists believe that this material is left over from the creation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and that studying it will provide clues to how the Sun and planets formed.
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: January 20, 2006
NASA launched the first space mission to Pluto yesterday as a powerful rocket hurled the New Horizons spacecraft on a nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to the edge of the solar system.
Gary I. Rothstein/European Pressphoto Agency
The launch of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
As it soared toward a 2007 rendezvous with Jupiter, whose powerful gravitational field will slingshot it on its way to Pluto, mission managers said radio communications confirmed that the 1,054-pound craft was in good health.
The $700 million mission began when a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket rose from a launching pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 2 p.m., almost an hour later than planned because of low clouds that obscured a clear view of the flight path by tracking cameras.
"We have ignition and liftoff of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on a decadelong voyage to visit the planet Pluto and then beyond," declared Bruce Buckingham, NASA's launching commentator.
Less than an hour later, all three stages of the booster rocket worked as planned, and the spacecraft separated from them and sprinted away toward deep space. The robot ship sped away at about 36,000 miles per hour, the fastest flight of any spacecraft sent from Earth, allowing it to pass the Moon in about nine hours.
"This is a historic day," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., the mission's principal scientist and team leader.
Speaking at a news conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Dr. Stern said the timing assured that the New Horizons would arrive for its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015 - the 50th anniversary of the first flyby of Mars by the Mariner 4, the mission that began the exploration of the planets.
Yesterday's liftoff also paid homage to Pluto's discoverer, the astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, who in 1930 became the only American to find a planet in the solar system. (He died at 90, in 1997.) His widow, Patricia Tombaugh, 93, and other family members were present at the cape, and some of his remains were among the commemorative items aboard the spacecraft.
"Some of Clyde's ashes are on their way to Pluto today," Dr. Stern said.
The New Horizons is to reach Jupiter's gravitational field in 13 months. The trip to Pluto will take eight more years, most of which the craft will spend in electronic "hibernation" to save power and wear on the equipment needed for its seven experiments.
The New Horizons is powered by a small plutonium-fired electric generator. Its instruments include three cameras, for visible-light, infrared and ultraviolet images, and three spectrometers to study the composition and temperatures of Pluto's thin atmosphere and surface features.
It also carries a University of Colorado dust counter, the first experiment to fly on a planetary mission that is entirely designed and operated by students. This is the only experiment that will not hibernate during the mission.
In addition to the two-hour delay, the launching was postponed twice in two days - on Tuesday by strong winds at the cape and on Wednesday by a storm that caused a power failure at the spacecraft's control center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Mission planners had until Feb. 14 to launch the mission this year, but only until the end of this month to use the gravity boost from Jupiter, which will shorten the trip to Pluto by five years.
Once near its target, the New Horizons is to conduct about five months of studies, including a closest-approach dash that takes it within 6,200 miles of Pluto's surface and 16,800 miles from the planet's large moon, Charon. The craft will also study two smaller moons found late last year by the Hubble Space Telescope and any new features discovered while it is on its way, scientists said.
The mission is to continue past Pluto, possibly visiting large objects in the Kuiper Belt, an outer zone of the solar system that includes Pluto. The belt is made up of thousands of icy, rocky objects that include comets and small planets. Scientists believe that this material is left over from the creation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and that studying it will provide clues to how the Sun and planets formed.