New Horizon Spacecraft Arrives At KSC
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space
Center, Florida, on Saturday for final preparations and testing for
the probe's decade-long journey. It will be the first spacecraft to
visit Pluto and its moon Charon.
New Horizons arrived at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility
aboard a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane and was moved to a clean
room for processing and testing. It is scheduled to launch on a
Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket in January 2006. New Horizons
recently completed four months of space- environment tests at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, and the John
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, where it
was designed and built.
Carrying seven scientific instruments the compact, nearly 1,000
pound probe will fly by Pluto and Charon as early as summer 2015.
Its mission is to characterize the global geology and geomorphology
of the bodies, map their surface compositions, record temperatures,
and examine Pluto's complex atmosphere. Fly bys of ancient rocky
objects farther out in the solar system may be undertaken during an
extended mission.
In October New Horizons will undergo a series of functional
tests, readiness checks, and an "end-to-end" test with the tracking
facilities of NASA's Deep Space Network. In November, hydrazine
fuel for attitude control and course correction maneuvers will be
loaded, and the spacecraft will undergo a final spin-balance
test.
At the Atlas Space Operations Center on Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, processing is underway on the Atlas V. Stacking of the
vehicle at Launch Complex 41 begins in early October and will be
completed late that month or in early November. A launch countdown
rehearsal will be performed in November. In December, the
flight-ready spacecraft will be transported to the launch pad for
hoisting on to the Atlas V.
Following final launch approval, liftoff is scheduled for Jan.
11, 2006, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 2:07 p.m.
EST. Launch windows are also available daily from Jan. 12 through
Feb. 14, 2006.
New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers
program of medium-class planetary missions. The Applied Physics
Laboratory will operate the spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate.
Principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research
Institute, San Antonio, leads the New Horizons science and mission
team. Southwest Research Institute directed the development of the
mission's seven science instruments.
The National Research Council ranked the first reconnaissance of
Pluto and the Kuiper Belt at the top of its priority list for
planetary missions this decade. A close-up look at these mysterious
bodies will provide new information about the origin and evolution
of our solar system.
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