What next after NASA’s 9-yr Pluto mission

On Tuesday, a spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America made an historic flypast of Pluto, and scientists are standing by for data.

The craft, New Horizons blasted off in January 19, 2006, and was the fastest launch recorded, reaching speeds of over 36,000 miles per hour. The spacecraft passed the Moon after just nine hours, around eight times quicker than the Apollo programme, and reached Jupiter the following year.

The New Horizons spacecraft travelled 3 billion miles and took 9.5 years to reach the Pluto system. The spacecraft had to fly through a target circle of only 200 miles in diameter at a speed of 34,000mph. It had half an hour to gather data during its closest approach

It will take until late 2016 for all the data to be transmitted back to Earth at a rate of just 2 kilobits a second. It takes 4.5 hours for the signal to reach Earth

How is the spacecraft powered?

Most spacecraft are powered by solar radiation, converting incoming light into electricity to keep onboard equipment warm and power communication and processing units. But at nearly four billion miles from the sun, the solar radiation is so faint by the time a spacecraft reaches Pluto that it would need impractically large solar panels to harvest enough energy. Instead, New Horizons is powered by a nuclear generator – appropriately containing plutonium fuel – that gives off heat as it decays.

What was learnt in the past 24 hours?

The new up-close images show that Pluto is slightly larger than was thought -2,370 kilometres (1,473 miles) in diameter – making it undisputedly the largest dwarf planet in the solar system. For the past decade astronomers had been undecided about whether Pluto or Eris, another dwarf planet beyond Neptune, was bigger. Astronomers already have good estimates of Pluto’s mass, and so the larger volume than expected means that Pluto must be less dense than we thought and probably contains more ice beneath the surface. Sensors on New Horizons also detected a thin nitrogen atmosphere extending far out into space, which scientists believe may shed snow, with nitrogen flakes tumbling down to the surface before evaporating again at the surface.

On Wednesday at around 3pm ET/ 8pm BST a new set of images was expected to be published from the moment of closest contact.

After passing through the Pluto system the spacecraft will continue its mission into the Kuiper Belt – a region of space beyond the planets consisting mainly of frozen remnants from the Solar System’s formation

Is Pluto a planet?

Several months after the launch of New Horizons, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union voted to change the definition of the word “planet”, a move that downgraded Pluto to the lesser “dwarf planet”. The flyby has resurrected the debate, however, and yesterday Charles Bolden, Nasa’s chief administrator, said he hoped the official classification would be reconsidered. “I call it a planet, but I’m not the rule maker,” he said.

Scientists behind the mission

Alan Stern is the New Horizons mission commander and was the person to close the hatch on the spacecraft and bid it a final farewell when it launched nearly a decade ago. But his cheerleading for the scientific exploration of Pluto dates back to a decade before this, when possible Pluto missions were regularly floated within NASA and then scrapped or put on hold.

“If the Pluto mission was a cat it would be dead long ago because it’s had more than nine lives,” he said. Stern and other key members of the mission team, such as Alice Bowman, mission operations manager, and Glen Fountain, the project manager, have been quietly preparing for this week out of the public eye for nearly a decade, tracking the probe as it crossed the solar system.

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After this week, once the fuss dies down, their work will start in earnest as they begin analysing the data that is slowly being streamed back to Earth from the spacecraft.

Where is New Horizons heading next?

The mission is now speeding onwards into the Kuiper Belt where it will examine one or two of the ancient, icy miniature worlds in the vast region. The so-called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that it might fly-by include Quoar, Eris (close in size to Pluto), Makemake, Haumea or Sedna. In coming months, scientists will decide the spacecraft’s next target and send signals from Earth to New Horizons to thrust its rockets to tweak its trajectory.

When will the mission end?

The fuel is designed to last until the late 2020s or even beyond. When it runs out of power, astronomers will lose contact with the probe and it will continue to drift out past the Kuiper belt and eventually leave the solar system.

-Culled from the UK Guardian

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