|
( New Horizons)
New Horizons is a robotic spacecraft mission by NASA currently underway. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA may also approve flybys of one or more other Kuiper Belt Objects. New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006 directly into an Earth- and solar-escape trajectory. It had an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.21&_160;km/s (36,260&_160;mph) after its last engine shut down, making it the fastest spacecraft launched to date. It flew by Jupiter on 28 February 2007 at 54340 UTC. It will arrive at Pluto on 14 July 2015 then continue to the Kuiper belt. The New Horizons craft was built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). The mission's principal investigator is Dr. S. Alan Stern (NASA Associate Administrator, formerly of the Southwest Research Institute). Overall control, after separation from the launch vehicle, is performed at Mission Operations Center (MOC) at the Applied Physics Laboratory. The science instruments are operated at the Clyde Tombaugh Science Operations Center (T-SOC) in Boulder, Colorado. Navigation, which is not realtime, is performed at various contractor facilities; KinetX is the lead on the New Horizons' navigation team and is responsible for planning trajectory adjustments as the spacecraft speeds toward the outer solar system.
| 
