We’ve made many discoveries here on Earth, but space still remains largely a mystery. Partly to blame are the vast distances involved; it’s easier to journey to the bottom of the ocean than to the nearest planet. NASA, however, doesn’t back down from a challenge. Their New Horizons spacecraft aims to travel not to the nearest planet, but to the one farthest away from us; a few days ago the craft began a historic journey to Pluto.
On Aug. 25 at 10:04 EDT, the New Horizons spacecraft, launched on Jan. 19, 2006, reached Neptune’s orbit in a record-breaking eight years and eight months on its 3 billion-mile voyage to Pluto. Built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the New Horizons spacecraft, moving about 51,000 miles per hour, or 23 kilometers per second, is now approximately 2.48 billion miles past Neptune and is expected to make a historic first encounter with Pluto in next July. The spacecraft will begin to conduct distant-encounter operations with Pluto starting Jan. 4, 2015, following the pre-Pluto hibernation period, into which it was placed by mission controllers at APL at 9:21 a.m. EDT on Aug. 29. The space probe’s calibrated instruments will be put to use in a close-approach exploration next July.
The New Horizons spacecraft follows in the footsteps of NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2, as it explores the gas giants of the solar system. It will lead the first reconnaissance of Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix and Hydra. The spacecraft has been configured to gather data on the global geology of Pluto and its moons, including their surface compositions and temperatures, during a five-month-long study. In addition to the investigation of the Pluto system, the New Horizons space probe will also explore other small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region, a disc-shaped area beyond Neptune’s orbit that is known for being comprised of ice dwarfs, among which one of the largest is Pluto.
This expedition into the Kuiper Belt region will allow scientists to investigate if the ice dwarfs possess the ingredients necessary for the formation of life—organic molecules and water ice. Moreover, researchers will have the opportunity to glean insights into planetary formation, since planets have been conjectured to grow by accretion of small bodies such as ice dwarfs.
The New Horizons mission will also look into Earth’s planetary evolution as the space probe examines Pluto’s atmosphere, which has been discovered to be steadily escaping into space in the same way that some propose Earth’s original hydrogen and helium atmosphere were lost. Amidst the growing excitement for the likely discoveries to be made in the outposts of the Earth’s solar system, the only thing that researchers expect from the New Horizons mission is to be surprised.
