Why the New Horizons mission to Pluto is so important for humanity. New Horizons mission. Discoveries and facts Sputnik new horizons pluto

New Horizons is the first spacecraft designed to reach Pluto, and the scientific information it gathered during its mission will ultimately rewrite our textbook on this tiny icy world about which we know so little.

The New Horizons mission is unique in many ways and even has a few secrets on board.

Here are 11 interesting facts about the incredible mission to Pluto.

The launch of New Horizons was the fastest in history

On January 19, 2006, NASA attached the New Horizons spacecraft to the top of an Atlas V rocket and launched it into space. It was the fastest launch in history, reaching speeds of over 58,000 km/h. Just nine hours after launch, the device had already reached the Moon. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to reach it. The New Horizons probe reached it eight times faster.

Pluto was still a planet when New Horizons was launched.

When the probe was launched, scientists were already whispering worriedly about Pluto's status among the planets. That's because the Pluto-sized object Eris was discovered in 2005, and astronomers needed to decide whether Eris would become the tenth planet or whether it would be easier to redefine a planet.

Pluto ultimately ceased to be a planet five months after New Horizons launched.

Despite the fact that the New Horizons probe was created for Pluto, it also looked at Jupiter

In 2007, the New Horizons spacecraft made an important encounter with Jupiter. The spacecraft needed the powerful gravity of the giant planet, which accelerated the probe like a slingshot towards Pluto. This flyby was successful and accelerated the probe to another 14,500 km/h.

The New Horizons probe captured the first video of an extraterrestrial volcano eruption

One of Jupiter's moons, Io, is home to more than four hundred volcanoes, making it the most geologically active and driest object in our solar system. As the New Horizons probe approached Jupiter, it took a series of images of Io that revealed volcanic eruptions on the surface.

Taken together, these images made it possible to create the first video of an erupting volcano outside the Earth.

New Horizons carries the ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh

Tombaugh discovered this dwarf planet in 1930, and 67 years later, while dying, he asked to send his ashes into space. NASA placed a handful of his ashes on top of New Horizons before it launched in 2006. His remains "visited" the planet he discovered. However, Tombo's ashes are just one of a number of secrets aboard New Horizons.

The New Horizons probe runs on nuclear fuel

The New Horizons probe flies so far from the Sun that it cannot rely on solar panels to generate power. Instead, its nuclear battery converts radiation from the decay of plutonium atoms into electricity, thus powering its engine and the instruments on board so it can gather as much information as possible.

Such batteries are in short supply. NASA, for example, has enough plutonium left for a couple of these. And they are not going to produce it yet.

There are seven instruments on board New Horizons, two of which are named after characters from the 1950s television series.

Five of the seven New Horizons tools are represented by acronyms. Some of them sound familiar like PEPSSI (Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation) and REX (Radio Science Experiment).

Two instruments without acronyms in their names are Ralph and Alice. Ralph will help scientists study the geology and composition of Pluto's surface, while Alice will study Pluto's atmosphere. Ralph and Alice (or Alice) are two main characters in the 50s television series Honeymooners.

All New Horizons instruments operate with minimal power consumption, especially the Ralph camera

Although the Ralph camera was built over 10 years ago, it is one of the most sophisticated cameras ever made. It weighs about 10 kilograms and requires the same amount of energy to operate as a small table lamp.

This powerful instrument can reveal features on Pluto's surface up to 60 meters across.

A tiny piece of debris can destroy the device

New Horizons is currently flying through space at 50,000 km/h. If it gets hit by a piece of ice or dust, the spacecraft will be destroyed before it even has a chance to send data back to mission control.

"Even tiny particles the size of a grain of rice could be lethal to New Horizons because we're moving so fast," said Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator.

The mission won't end with Pluto

If all goes well with Pluto, or if New Horizons has enough fuel left, the probe will fly on to study at least one more object in the region of the solar system beyond our planets in the Kuiper belt.

This belt lies at the edge of our solar system and is 20 times wider than the asteroid belt that separates Mars from Jupiter. Astronomers think it may store debris from celestial objects left over from the formation of our solar system.

It's been 26 years since we last looked at the planet for the "first time"

The last time this happened was in 1989, when Voyager flew past Neptune. Since then we have not explored new worlds. The current flyby of Pluto is historic.

TASS-DOSSIER /Inna Klimacheva/. On July 14, 2015, a spacecraft from Earth flew close to Pluto for the first time. The American automatic interplanetary station New Horizons has come as close as possible to the dwarf planet at a distance of 12.5 thousand km.

Pluto

This celestial body was discovered on February 18, 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997).

Previously, Pluto was considered a full-fledged ninth planet of the solar system, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Congress declared it a dwarf planet.

Pluto is approximately 5.7 billion km from Earth. Before visiting New Horizons, scientists had at their disposal only photographs of the dwarf planet taken from low-Earth orbit by the Hubble telescope (Hubble; a joint American-European project). However, these photographs made it possible to discern only the most general surface details.

Project history

The automatic interplanetary station New Horizons (from English "New Horizons") was created by order of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA; NASA) at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University; Baltimore, Maryland, USA ).

The laboratory also provides overall management of the New Horizons mission. The Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, Texas) is responsible for the scientific equipment installed on the spacecraft.

Work on the design of the device began in the late 1990s, and construction began in 2001. The cost of the project in 2006 was estimated at $650 million.

Characteristics of AMS

• The spacecraft has the shape of an irregular prism.
• Its dimensions are 2.2 x 2.7 x 3.2 m, total weight is 478 kg.
• The on-board computing complex consists of two systems - command and data processing; navigation and control. Each of them is duplicated; as a result, there are four computers on board the AWS.
• The propulsion system includes 14 engines (12 for orientation and two for correction), running on hydrazine.
• Power supply is provided by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) using plutonium-238 dioxide (at launch there were 11 kg of radioactive fuel on board, which was purchased from Russia).
• The RTG power is 240 watts, when approaching Pluto it is about 200 watts.
• To store scientific information, there are two flash memory banks with a total capacity of 16 gigabytes - the main and the backup.

Scientific equipment

The device is equipped with seven scientific instruments:

• ultraviolet camera-spectrometer Alice ("Alice");
• observation camera Ralph ("Ralph");
• optical telescope camera LORRI ("Lorry") with a resolution of 5 microradians (a unit of measurement of angular resolution in astronomy), designed for detailed and long-range photography; radio spectrometer REX ("Rex");
• particle analyzer SWAP ("Swap");
• particle detector PEPSSI ("Pepsi");
• cosmic dust detector SDC (SDC).

In addition to scientific equipment, on board the spacecraft there is a capsule with part of the ashes of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, as well as a CD with the names of 434 thousand 738 earthlings participating in NASA's "Send Your Name to Pluto" campaign.

Launch and flight

New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006 by an Atlas V launch vehicle (Atlas 5) from the Cape Canaveral Space Center (Florida, USA).

In April 2006, the spacecraft crossed the orbit of Mars, in February 2007 it performed a gravity assist maneuver in the vicinity of Jupiter, and in June 2008 it flew past Saturn. In July 2010, he surveyed Neptune and its satellite Triton, in March 2011, he crossed the orbit of Uranus, and in August 2014, Neptune.

In January-February 2015, New Horizons began observing Pluto and its largest satellite, Charon. In early April, approaching the planet at a distance of 113 million km, the automatic station transmitted photographs to Earth. In May, photographs of its satellites were taken - Hydra, Niktas, Kerberos, Styx, in June - the first color images of Pluto and Charon (despite the low resolution of the images, it was possible to see the difference in the color of the surfaces of celestial bodies, the color scheme of the planet is closer to beige-orange, the satellite - grey).

On July 4, 2015, a computer failure occurred at the automatic interplanetary station and communication with the device was lost. The AWS entered safe mode and stopped collecting data. Two days later, on July 6, the automatic station returned to normal operation.

Meeting with Pluto

On July 14, 2015, New Horizons came as close as possible to Pluto - at a distance of 12.5 thousand km. After 14 minutes, the spacecraft found itself at the minimum distance from Charon - 28.8 thousand km. However, a confirmation signal about the achievement of the main goal of the journey was received from him by the Earth only the next day - July 15.

Flying near the dwarf planet, the interplanetary apparatus carried out observations for 9 days. He was the first to obtain detailed color photographs of Pluto and Charon (published in September 2015), and conducted studies of the atmosphere of the dwarf planet.

It was not possible to discover any new satellites of Pluto, in addition to the already known five. All observations were carried out from a flyby trajectory, which is why only part of Pluto's surface was photographed in good resolution. New Horizons could not enter the orbit of the dwarf planet due to its high speed - approximately 14.5 thousand km/s.

It is planned that New Horizons will transmit the collected data until October - December 2016 (signals from it reach the Earth with a delay of 4.5 hours). By July 2016, more than 75% of the data collected by the spacecraft during its flyby near Pluto had already been transmitted.

Continuation of the mission

After exploring Pluto, New Horizons went to other objects in the Kuiper belt, which includes the dwarf planet. The belt is located 5 billion km from the Sun, beyond the orbit of Neptune, and consists of small celestial bodies. It was named after the American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who in 1950 suggested the existence of small bodies beyond Neptune.

In January 2019, the spacecraft is expected to fly near another belt object - a small asteroid 2014 MU69 with a diameter of about 45 km. New Horizons exploration of Kuiper Belt objects will continue until 2021.

As of July 13, 2016, the automatic interplanetary station has been in flight for 10 years, 5 months and 25 days.

New Horizons' expected completion date is 2026.

In 2006, on January 19, the NASA space agency launched the New Horizons spacecraft as part of the New Frontiers program. The task of the space mission is to study the distant planets of the Solar System, and the main goal is to study the planet Pluto and its satellite Charon.

Mission plans and objectives

The New Horizons space mission is designed for 15-17 years; along the long path to Pluto, the device will have to simultaneously see the planet Mars (it has already passed the orbit of Mars in 2006), explore Jupiter, performing a gravity maneuver from the orbit of a large planet to achieve greater speed for further path, cross the orbit of Saturn and Uranus, then fly close to Neptune, simultaneously “clicking” it with the LORRI camera in order to test it before reaching Pluto and send pictures to Earth. By 2015, New Horizons should reach Pluto and begin studying it, so New Horizons images should exceed the size and quality of Hubble images.

New Horizons spacecraft

(The launch of the vehicle on the Atlas-5 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral)

This newest long-distance spacecraft left planet Earth in January 2006 with the highest speed in the history of astronautics of 16.21 km/sec, although at the moment its speed is less than 15.627 km/sec. The device has various accessories, a LORRI camera with a resolution of 5 microradians for detailed shooting from a long distance, a spectrometer for searching for neutral atoms, a radio spectrometer for studying Pluto’s atmosphere, thermal properties and mass, as well as for studying the satellite of the planet Pluto Charon and other associated planets and objects, such as for example, the celestial object VNH0004, which revolves around the Sun at a distance of 75 million km from it.

(Schematic view of the New Horizons spacecraft)

The spacecraft is small in size 2.2 × 2.7 × 3.2 meters, weighing 478 kg along with 80 kg of fuel, but nevertheless has a powerful system of antennas and amplifiers for communication with the Earth. But if near Jupiter the device can transmit data at a speed of 38 kbit/s (4.75 kilobytes per second), then from the orbit of Pluto the data transfer rate will drop to only 96 bytes per second, which means that it will take a whole hour to receive 1 megabyte , but these data are extremely important for science and scientists are most expecting new, previously unstudied data from the apparatus, close-up images of Pluto and Charon, and even high-quality images.

New Horizons route

(Flight trajectory of the New Horizons spacecraft)

January 19, 2006 - New Horizons successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, planet Earth. The device was lifted using the most powerful American launch vehicle Atlas-5, the four first-stage engines of which, it should be noted, were equipped with Russian-made RD-180 engines. (task completed)

June 11, 2006 - the New Horizons spacecraft flew at a distance of 110,000 km near asteroid 132524 APL (task completed)

(Photography by the New Horizons apparatus of the planet Jupiter; two satellites, Ganymede and Europa, are visible in the photograph)

February 28, 2007 - the New Horizons spacecraft approached Jupiter and performed a gravitational maneuver, simultaneously photographing the planet and satellite Io in high quality (task completed)

(Image by the New Horizons apparatus of Jupiter’s satellite Io in high color quality, which clearly shows the volcanic eruption)

(Image by the New Horizons apparatus of the planet Neptune)

July 30, 2010 - the spacecraft photographed Neptune and its moon Triton, located at a distance of 23.2 AU. e. from the planet (task completed)

January 10, 2013 - successful communication with the device and loading of updated software on board the spacecraft (task completed)

(Image of Pluto at a distance of 3.6 billion kilometers from the New Horizons spacecraft, taken on October 6, 2007 by the LORRI camera on board the device)

October 2013 - the New Horizons spacecraft will be at a distance of 5 AU. from Pluto (task completed)

February 2015 - approach to Pluto and the beginning of the first observations of the planet (task completed)

July 14, 2015 - the closest possible distance to Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft flew between the planet Pluto and its satellite Charon and for several days explored the planet and satellite from a very close distance, transmitting unique data to Earth (task completed)

(Image of Pluto from a distance of 12,500 km, taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. Photo source: NASA)

Having covered about 5 billion kilometers, traveled a journey of 9 years, and approached Pluto as close as possible, New Horizons transmitted the first most detailed image of the dwarf planet Pluto from a distance of only 12.5 thousand kilometers.

(Image of the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons apparatus, on which you can see a mountain 3.5 thousand meters high and craters of various sizes. Photo source: NASA)

New Horizons then had to obtain information about the atmosphere, temperature, and learn about the surface composition and geology of Pluto. The spacecraft will then explore Pluto's moon Charon. It remains to be seen whether Charon is a satellite or whether Charon is the same dwarf planet, in which case the Plato-Charon system will be a double planet (task completed)

>Chronology

Launch vehicle: Atlas V 551 first stage; Centaur second stage; STAR 48B third stage

Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida

Trajectory: To Pluto using Jupiter's gravity.

Path

Beginning of the journey: The first 13 months - removing the spacecraft and turning on the instruments, calibration, slight correction of the trajectory using maneuvers and rehearsal for the meeting with Jupiter. New Horizons orbited Mars on April 7, 2006; it also tracked a small asteroid, later named "APL", in June 2006.

Jupiter: Closest approach occurred on February 28, 2007, at 51,000 miles per hour (about 23 kilometers per second). New Horizons flew 3 to 4 times closer to Jupiter than the Cassini spacecraft, which was within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) due to the planet's large size.

Interplanetary cruise: During the approximately 8-year journey to Pluto, all spacecraft instruments were turned on and tested, course trajectories were adjusted and an encounter with a distant planet was rehearsed.

During the cruise, New Horizons also visited the orbits of Saturn (June 8, 2008), Uranus (March 18, 2011), and Neptune (August 25, 2014).

Pluto system

In January 2015, New Horizons began the first of several stages of approach that will culminate in the first close flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015. On its closest approach, the craft will pass within about 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto and 17,900 miles (28,800 kilometers) of Charon.

Beyond Pluto: Kuiper Belt

The spacecraft has the ability to fly beyond the Pluto system and explore new Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). It carries additional hydrazine fuel for the flight to the defense complex; The craft's communications system is designed to operate even far beyond Pluto's orbit, and the science instruments can function in conditions worse than Pluto's dim sunlight.

Thus, the New Horizons team had to undertake a special search for small bodies in the OBE system that the ship could reach. In the early 2000s, the Kuiper Belt had not even been discovered. The National Academy of Sciences will direct New Horizons to fly to small OPCs 20 to 50 kilometers (about 12 to 30 miles) across, which are likely primitive and less informative than planets such as Pluto.

In 2014, using the Hubble Space Telescope, members of the New Horizons science team discovered three objects within the OPC - all 20-55 kilometers across. Possible dates for their flyby are at the end of 2018 or in 2019 at a distance of a billion miles from Pluto.

In the summer of 2015, after the Pluto flyby, the New Horizons team will work with NASA to select the best candidate among the three. In the fall of 2015, operators will start the engines aboard New Horizons at the optimal time to minimize the fuel required to reach the chosen destination and begin the journey.

All NASA missions strive to do more than just reconnaissance of their primary objectives, so they have been asked to fund an expanded mission. A proposal to further study the defense industry will be put forward in 2016; It will be evaluated by an independent panel of experts to determine the merits of such a move: the team will analyze the health of the spacecraft and its instruments, the contribution to science that New Horizons can make to the military-industrial complex, the cost of flight and exploration of the target point in the Kuiper Belt, and much more. .

If NASA approves the move, New Horizons would launch a new mission in 2017, giving its team time to plan for an impact that would take place one to two years later.

> New Horizons mission to Pluto

Mission New Horizons– spacecraft flight to the dwarf planet Pluto: research and first photos, external system, review of satellites, Kuiper belt.

Now you won’t surprise anyone by sending a probe to another planet in the solar system, because there’s a whole army of them on Mars. But previously they rarely took risks with long-distance launches. Voyager 2, which visited the outer planets in 1989 and is now heading into interstellar space, reached its maximum distance.

Another breakthrough was the New Horizons apparatus. In 2015, he accomplished his main goal - visiting the dwarf planet Pluto.

New Horizons Mission Background

Scientists sent Voyager 1 to Saturn in 1980 and began considering the planet as a gravitational slingshot for launching a probe to Pluto in 1986. But they wanted to study the satellites, so they couldn’t pull off the maneuver.

The researchers decided to look for a new option because no one had looked this far before. Moreover, the Kuiper belt and its precious objects were waiting there.

In 1989, Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal created the Pluto Underground project with the dream of going to the planet and looking beyond. In the 1990s. they were able to study many trans-Neptunian objects and the site became increasingly interesting.

After the mission was canceled in 2000, they decided to create the New Horizons spacecraft. Disputes over financing dragged on for a couple of years and, having borrowed $650 million, Stern's team promised to repay the debt within 14 years.

New Horizons mission to Pluto

The initial target was Pluto, which was supposed to arrive in 2015. Alan Stern was chosen as the principal investigator. On board, in addition to scientific instruments, they placed the US flag and other earthly symbols, as well as 30 grams of the ashes of Clyde Tomb, who discovered Pluto.

Pluto Mission Instruments

7 devices were installed on the probe:

• Alice is a UV spectrometer that analyzes the composition and structure of the atmosphere, and also searches for atmospheric layers around the Charon and Kuiper belts.
• LORRI is a telescopic camera that collects information about impacts at large distances.
• PEPSSI is an energetic particle spectrometer that determines the composition and density of plasma in the planet’s atmosphere.
• Ralph is a visual and IR thermal imager/spectrometer that produces color, composition and heat map.
• REX - determines the composition and temperature of the atmosphere.
• SDC (created by students) – measures cosmic dust.
• SWAP is a spectrometer that detects atmospheric “ejection” and monitors the contact between Pluto and the stellar wind.

Launch of mission to Pluto

Due to weather problems, the device was sent 2 days later than planned (January 19) in 2006. It took off from Air Force Canaveral and broke out at the fastest speed of 16.5 km/s. It took only 9 hours to reach lunar orbit. But it did not break the record of Voyager 1, whose speed was 17.145 km/s.

Inner Solar System

The winter of 2006 was spent analyzing the functionality of the tools. On April 7, he flew past Mars at a speed of 21 km/s. At this moment, the device moved away from the star by 243 million km. In June, it rushed past asteroid 132524 AP at a distance of 101867 km. Ralph's device helped take pictures and determine the diameter of 2.5 km. Pluto can be found in the bottom photo.

In September, New Horizons photographed the distant dwarf planet for the first time. At this time he was testing LORRI. The pictures were taken at a distance of 4,200,000,000 km.

Outer Solar System

The first photos of Jupiter appeared in September 2006 at a distance of 291 million km. In January, IR footage of Callisto arrived. In 2007, the mechanism approached Europa at 2,964,860 km and used Jupiter's gravity. This helped to accelerate by 4 km/s and reduce flight time by 3 years.

Jupiter became a dress rehearsal, which helped the device check all the equipment, communications and memory buffer.

On Jupiter, the most important thing was to monitor atmospheric conditions and analyze the structure and components of the cloud cover. It was possible to examine radiation impacts created by thermal energy in the polar regions, as well as powerful storms. For the first time, the Great Red Spot and its faint rings have been captured up close.

Traveling past Jupiter made it possible to study the structure and movement of gas jets on the moon Io. It was possible to calculate the emissions of the Tvashtar volcano, extending 330 km from the surface. The IR survey showed another 36 volcanic formations.

LEISA analyzed the surface layer of Callisto, demonstrating exactly how lighting and viewing conditions affect the IR data of the surface ice crust.

Having passed Jupiter, the device spent most of its time on its way to Pluto in a state of hibernation. Thus, he rushed past Saturn (2008) and Uranus (2011). In 2014, he woke up, and the team activated instrument calibration and route adjustments. On August 24, it passed Neptune.

New Horizons mission encounters Pluto

In 2015, we had a long-awaited date with the tiny dwarf Pluto. On January 31, the probe took several photos at a distance of 203,000,000 km, where the planet and Charon were displayed. This was followed by footage of Nyx and Hydra (201,000,000), and then Kerberos and Styx.

On July 4, the connection was interrupted due to an anomaly in the software and the device went into safe mode. The next day, the glitch was corrected, and the probe continued its approach. The device performed its closest pass on July 14. At this moment, scientists took the highest quality and most detailed photographs and collected a huge amount of information.

The probe is now on its way to the Kuiper Belt. His task is to study one or two objects lying on the path of the trajectory. Three potential targets have already been selected: PT1, PT2 and PT3. All of them span 30-55 km in diameter and are too tiny to be tracked by telescopic observation. Distant at 43-44 AU. from the sun. These are frosty objects and differ significantly in performance from Pluto.

Despite its speed, the device will never catch up with Voyagers. But this is not necessary, because there are still many unexplored objects within the system. With its help, it was possible to obtain a huge amount of information about the solar planets and look into the most remote places.