New Horizons Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Set to Awake Nine Years After Launch
Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Set to Awake Nine Years After
Launch
Dec 1, 2014, 5:03 PM ET
By JOHN FISCHER
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to awake on Dec. 6
from the last of its 18 hibernation periods and prepare for its initial
approach towards Pluto, which will take place on Jan. 15. The spacecraft is
scheduled to come as close as 6,200 miles from the surface of Pluto on July 14,
2015 -- the closest any man-made object has come to the dwarf planet. The
mission marks the first visit outside Neptune's orbit to the Kuiper Belt, which
consists of Pluto and thousands of objects that have not yet been identified,
according to Spaceflight Now, a space news website.
"This is the first look at this new zone of rocky,
icy planets," Michael Buckley, a public information officer for John
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory told ABC News. "This is what
New Horizons is supposed to do."
New Horizons is currently 2.9 billion miles from earth
and was launched in January 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket. Pluto at the time was
still considered a planet, with scientists later that year voting to demote its
status to that of a dwarf planet.
PHOTO: A Hubble Space Telescope image released by NASA in
2006 shows Pluto and three of its five moons.
UIG/Getty Images
The spacecraft has over the last nine years frequently
gone into hibernation for various amounts of time ranging from 36 to 202 days,
all of which adds up to five years in total, to help conserve power and allow
scientists time to make plans for its exploration in space. It transmits a beep
once a week to alert scientists that it is still functioning properly. Once
awakened on Dec. 6, New Horizons will transmit radio signals that will reach
the Mission's control center, located at the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory in Maryland, in about four hours at 9 p.m. eastern time.
PHOTO: An artists concept shows the New Horizonss
Spacecraft approaching Pluto.
SSPL/Getty Images
Scientists plan to use the next six weeks after it wakes
to check its memory, navigation and other functions, starting the observation
phase in January, taking photos and measurements of the dwarf planet and its
moons while also observing its atmosphere and how it interacts with the sun.
"This is really quite an epic journey," Alan
Stern, the lead investigator for the New Horizons mission from the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., told Spaceflight Now. "Three billion
miles across the entirety of our planetary system, from the inner planets to
the middle solar system to the third zone -- the Kuiper belt -- and for the
first time. No voyage like this has been conducted since the epic days of
Voyager, and nothing like it is planned again."
The observation period will continue until April, with
scientists predicting to have very clear imagery of the planet and its
surroundings by May, better than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. New
Horizon's will transmit the information throughout 2015 and most of 2016,
ending transmission late that year, according to Spaceflight Now.
Scientists are hoping that NASA will continue to fund and
extend the mission to allow for further exploration.
"The hope is that it will encounter one other Kuiper
Belt object," Buckley told ABC News.
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