i found this web site
http://www.heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp
it show where NH is compared to voy1, 2/pioneer
any one else have a fav web page that shows NH loc? I think this one is updated onece a day
You won't believe this, but the New Horizons' official site also has http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php.
Here's a screen capture from the NH site. I think someone in a past thread called it the "bat out of hell trajectory"
Right on. NH is already one-eighth of the way to Jupiter. Speedy little guy.
Looking at the trajectory side view. I never realized that NH will encounter Pluto right near the point it passes the plane of the solar system.
New Horizons passes orbit of Mars.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/040706.htm
How is it possible that New Horizons has passed the orbit of Mars in only a few months? I always thought that a trip to Mars takes a year or so. And how much kilometers per second is New Horizons traveling at this moment?
That's assuming that you want to stay at Mars. In that case, full-speed isn't your best bet - otherwise you need a LOT of fuel to slow the spacecraft down. When we send a probe to Mars to stay there, it's done gradually, so that the probe can use a smaller amount of fuel for orbit-insertion.
New Horizons isn't concerned with any of that - it's just zipping right by.
So a flight to Mars need not take very long. Just depends on 1) if you want to land there, and 2) how much fuel you can carry.
And NH is moving at 21 kilometers/sec.
well NH is almost two AU from the sun and 1 AU from home.... movein out
so now that we are 2 AU from the sun wha is the Skin temp of the NH? anybody know?
Errr... Skin time???
We don't measure skin temp, but our bulk structure is running 27 C.
-Alan
Oh oh ! Be care of what we say All...God's watching us
The next major milestone for New Horizons: Passing Ceres, the largest main belt asteroid
The spacecraft will cross the orbital path of Ceres on July 6, 2006. The actual passing of Ceres in heliocentric distance will take place on July 25, 2006 at 18:30 UTC due to Ceres being close to it's outermost possible distance from the sun. Indeed, the 3 AU crossing takes place just two days later on July 27, 2006! Later!
J P
Are spice kernels available for the New Horizons spacecraft? I'd like to make some pretty pictures myself!
Well, it looks like we know where Dr Stern will be on 12th April
New Horizons Mission to Begin Pluto Encounter April 12th, 2015 in Salute to Early Space Explorers
The year 2015 will be the 54th anniversary of the spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the Earth and the 34th anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. Each April 12, Yuri's Night holds parties around the planet to commemorate these occasions. New Horizons mission PI Dr. Alan Stern will be present at theYuri's Night Washington, D.C. party to talk more about the mission...
NH is designed to stay warm inside, its built like a vaccum flask.
UPDATE! On 05/03/2007, at 00:01:54 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 900 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is 772 million km. NH is now less than 3.837 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 21.31 km/s. Later!
J P
UPDATE. She is now 1AU from Jupiter and still seems to be doing good.
Important milestone! On 07/06/2007, at 21:30:30 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached it's first 1 billion km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is 870.4 million km. NH is now less than 3.72 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 20.6 km/s. Later!
J P
Looking at the New Horizons Current Position chart: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php
I notice that we'll be moving off the edge of the top chart in a few months. Rather than dropping the chart entirely or rescaling it to make it closer to the "Full Trajectory" chart, I wonder if it would be possible to simply shift the center of the chart, keeping the scale the same. That is, instead of putting the sun at the center, would it be possible to center the chart on the point where New Horizons crossed the orbit of Jupiter? I'm pretty sure that'd keep the start point on the chart, and if we're lucky, it'd include the point where New Horizons will cross the orbit of Uranus. That's just past the half-way point, if I figure it correctly.
Failing that, switching to a chart that kept the same scale but was centered on New Horizons itself would be almost as good.
--Greg
UPDATE! On 09/10/2007, at 08:36:45 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1100 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is nearly 1.108 billion km. Halfway between the mean orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, NH is now less than 3.616 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 19.97 km/s. Later!
J P
...And crossing 8 AU early next week.
Going to be hard to find interesting milestones over the next seven years. I note, though, that on April 1, 2008, it should reach the "Browserpause," which is that thin white space on the "Current Position" map right where the path exits the picture. :-)
--Greg
Regarding milestones with which to follow NH's progress, I found myself wondering if there are any minor objects that orbit between Jupiter and Saturn's orbits. I came across the following abstract:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t74010qg40q4745l/
The abstract seems to indicate that there are 5 known objects between Jupiter and Saturn's orbit. I'm trying to search for more info. We could use these object's orbits as a sort of milestone.
edit: This plot suggests that there are many more: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/OuterPlot.html
Not counting comets and Jupiter Trojans there are currently 40 minor objects between 5 and 10 AU from the sun (by my calculations at least)
Next object New Horizons will pass (in current distance from the sun) is 2000 GM137, a centaur at 8.06 AU
I would like to know the current location of the star motor upper stage please
It will not have been tracked since launch - it would only be a best guess - you may find some info regarding it in the annals of the NH website, it was mentioned in the past.
Doug
UPDATE! On 11/15/2007, at 11:04:35 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1200 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is nearly 1.332 billion km. NH is now only 3.514 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 19.463 km/s. Later!
J P
And in the "are we there yet" spirit, I note that the current-position chart has be rescaled again, so the outer boundary is now Saturn's orbit, not Jupiter's.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php
Amazing how fast we're reaching the orbit of Saturn -- after just 2.5 years. Amazing how that'll only be half-way to the orbit of Uranus. And 1/3 of the way to Neptune's.
--Greg
UPDATE! On 01/21/2008, at 05:10:15 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1300 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is nearly 1.419 billion km. NH is now only 3.414 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 19.026 km/s. Later!
J P
As I see that New Horizons is decreasing its speed toward Pluto. How fast will NH be traveling past Pluto?
UPDATE! On 03/28/2008, at 16:30:15 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1400 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is 1.372 billion km. NH is now only 3.314 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 18.628 km/s. Later!
J P
NH will arrive very soon Saturn's orbit and its distance travel would be similar from Earth to Saturn and from Saturn to Uranus. Wait for another around 2 1/2 years to reach Uranus.
P.S.The times and distances shown were just done only by mentally estimating. Would be interested to hear the real numbers?
According to the NH website, "New Horizons' next checkpoint comes on June 8, 2008, when it passes the orbit of Saturn" so it's still a couple of months away.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/passingplanets/passingPlanets_current.php
Here are the other interesting dates from the same page
Uranus: March 18, 2011
Neptune: August 24, 2014
Pluto: July 14, 2015
So Uranus' orbit is almost exactly 3 years away.
--Greg
These planet orbit crossings are based on whatever day we pass the distance of the planet, so although we are currently beyond Saturn's semi-major axis, Saturn is near its aphelion and we don't count the orbit crossing until we are further out than Saturn itself is. Some interesting coincidences are going to occur:
Uranus passage occurs just as MESSENGER (another APL mission) settles into Mercury orbit--same day.
Neptune passage is the 25th anniversary of Voyager 2's Neptune flyby-- essentially to the day.
Pluto encounter is the 50th anniversary of Mariner 4--the first mission to Mars--to the day.
-Alan
Rather remarkable coincidences indeed, Alan! Come clean; you planned this all along!
The Mariner 4 connection is an excellent educational tie-in on that day, which itself will be a profound milestone for UMSF: 50 years of optical reconnaissance of the Solar System, and the initial completion of same for all the planets as we understood them at the dawn of the Space Age.
Alan, good comments! These will help us to feel closer to the NH mission! Every anything anniversary or milestone, will revive the presence of NH.
"...These planet orbit crossings are based on whatever day we pass the distance of the planet, so although we are currently beyond Saturn's semi-major axis, Saturn is near its aphelion and we don't count the orbit crossing until we are further out than Saturn itself is..."
I've thought that there's a pedantically-over-precise :-) way of saying when something's outside whatever's orbit, especially for something leaving the solar system outside the vicinity of the ecliptic (like the Voyagers).
Each planet's orbit is an ellipse, with the semi-major axis going through the sun. Imagine rotating the planet's orbit on the semimajor axis, to form an elliptcal sphereoid "membrane" with the sun at one focal point. A spacecraft or whatever is beyond the planet's orbit when it punches through that membrane. (let's hope it doesn't deflate it!)
All-- Today we are 810 days from launch and 405 days from Jupiter C/A. That is, we have spent precisely as many days post-Jupiter as it took to get there.
And at the very end of May we will be 25% of the way to the Pluto system in days—so we are about to enter the long middle of the journey that will last until early 2013.
There are still 2652 days to go. Vigilance is our watchword.
-Alan
25 % sounds good, until you realize you have 3 more 25's to go.....In the mean time I look forward to Phoenix.
Are my calculations correct that within 42-43 days NH will be 10 AU from the Sun or just app. 10 days before crossing the orbit of Saturn?
I believe that Hew Horizons is supposed to be the fasted spacecraft ever launched. So at what point in the distant future does it pass the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft to become the farthest from earth? (I know they have a big head start, but NH should eventually take first place).
David
Hi David, the idea that New Horizons will outstrip the Voyagers is a very common misconception due to this sentence in the http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2006/060119.asp: "The 1,054-pound, piano-sized spacecraft is the fastest ever launched..." New Horizons did leave Earth after launching faster than any other spacecraft to date, having launched about four percent faster than the previous record holder, Ulysses. And New Horizons will receive one further burst of speed during its flyby of Jupiter in 2007. However, both Voyagers also received gravity assists from Jupiter, and because they both flew closer to Jupiter than New Horizons will, their gravity assists were larger. In addition, both Voyagers also received boosts from Saturn flybys, and Voyager 2 went on to further flybys of Uranus and Neptune. The Uranus flyby sped it up, but the Neptune one actually slowed it down. New Horizons, on the other hand, gets only one more close flyby, of Pluto. And Pluto's mass is so tiny that it will be unlikely to add enough speed to New Horizons to allow it ever to overtake either of the Voyagers.
(If this sounds pat, it's because I wrote it for a Planetary Radio Q and A. Hope it's right. )
--Emily
It's also worth pointing out that, in terms of mere velocity, Messenger is now (I think) the fastest space probe ever. I'm thinking NH had the greatest delta-V imparted by a rocket. And Voyager 2 has the greatest hyperbolic excess so far. All different ways of interpreting "fastest."
--Greg
The two Helios approached closer to the Sun than Messenger, and may have a higher orbital velocity at perihelion.
I think it's better to ask:
"What was the velocity of Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 at some point (lets pick up 25 AU for it is past the Voyager 2 gravity assists) and what will be the velocity of NH at the same point?"
This will be a better question and we will see how many % is the difference of the velocities of these spacecraft. Actually I was looking for Emily's thread for Q&A yesterday in order to submit this question for the Planetary Radio, but I couldn't dig it out.
Atanas, the following http://www.dmuller.net/space/positions.php would give you an impression on how the 5 solar system leaving crafts are faring, distance over time, but doesnt give speed. Anyway, what you'd want to know is speed at infinity (from the Sun), i.e. the speed the probes will have when the Sun has no more gravitational influence on them.
The hyperbloic excess is the "speed at infinity (from the Sun)," and you can calculate it from the other orbital parameters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_trajectory
--Greg
Without doing calculations, just checking the internet, I found the following speeds at infinity:
16.62 km/s Voyager 1 (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-80420.html)
13.** km/s New Horizons (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-80420.html)
The New Horizons figures of course still depend on future trajectory correction maneuvers etc
Gut feeling (how scientific) tells me that Voyager 2 is somewhat slower than Voyager 1, and the Pioneers behind New Horizons
And now with calculations, using
(1) a = semi-major axis from the SSD Horizons system (date set for today, reference set to solar barycenter)
and using
(2) v_infinity = square root of ( G * M_sun / |a|) [as per Greg's reference]
I get:
16.6 km/s - Voyager 1
14.9 km/s - Voyager 2
12.5 km/s - New Horizons
11.3 km/s - Pioneer 10
10.4 km/s - Pioneer 11
I wonder what Ulysses might have after that rumored Jupiter flyby in 2099 ...
Sort of tallies with the values I quoted in my earlier post. Warning though ... I dont do these sorts of calculations for a living, so I may have missed something along the way
As NH is about to pass the orbit of Saturn: if Saturn was to be found in it's orbit in the path between the current NH position and the outer course, would NH then have then crashed into Saturn or it would have flown 'north' or 'south' of Saturn (ignoring any gravitional pulls) ?
2600 days and 3.5 billion km to go to the Pluto encounter ... feels like it will be tomorrow!
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/052908.htm
Milestones Ahead: New Horizons Set to Cross Saturn’s Orbit
Spacecraft Will Be First to Journey beyond Ringed Planet Since 1981
Last week, New Horizons woke up from its longest electronic hibernation period to date — 89 days. And over the next 10 days, the New Horizons team will celebrate a trio of milestones on the spacecraft’s long journey to explore Pluto in 2015.
The team roused New Horizons from hibernation mainly to re-point the spacecraft’s antenna, adjusting to the changing position of Earth around the Sun. The operations team is also carrying out navigation-ranging tests that mimic operations at Pluto, as well as conducting additional tracking, downlinking data from the student dust counter instrument, installing and testing bug-fix software for the SWAP solar wind plasma instrument, and uploading the spacecraft flight plan for the next several months. These activities will be complete by June 2; the next day, New Horizons will re-enter electronic hibernation for another 91 days. It will awaken for its annual checkout on Sept. 2.
Scientific diagram of New Horizons quickly approaching Saturn's Orbit.
New Horizons is quickly approaching
Saturn’s orbit. Click on image to enlarge.
New Horizons reaches the first milestone just before going back into hibernation. On June 2, the spacecraft will be 10 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun. One AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles (or 149 million kilometers). New Horizons will be 930 million miles, or just about 1.5 billion kilometers from the Sun.
On June 3, the mission team will celebrate the spacecraft’s 866th day in flight – or one-quarter of its 3,463-day (9.5-year) journey to Pluto. New Horizons will pass its halfway mark to Pluto in another 866 days, on Oct. 17, 2010.
Most notably, however, on Sunday, June 8, the spacecraft will cross the orbit of Saturn, though Saturn itself is nowhere near the course New Horizons is following to Pluto. “This milestone is significant because the last time any spacecraft journeyed beyond Saturn was 27 years ago, in August 1981, when Voyager 2 passed Saturn on its way to encounters with Uranus and Neptune later in the 1980s,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern.
After New Horizons passes the distance where NASA’s Cassini orbiter is operating at Saturn, only two spacecraft will be operating farther out than the Pluto-bound probe. These are NASA’s Voyagers 1 and 2, which are at the edge of the Sun’s heliosphere approximately 100 AU away.
UPDATE! On 06/04/2008, at 18:05:25 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1.5 billion km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is 1.352 billion km. NH is now only 3.219 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 16.921 km/s. Saturn orbit crossing is now just 4 days away. Later!
J P
I have rushed a beta-release of the New Horizons real-time simulation at http://www.dmuller.net/newhorizons/ Not all data is in yet, but the important events such as crossing the Saturn orbit and distance from Sun (250,000 km to go to the 1.5 bn distance from the Sun ... the solar system simulator rounds to full million kms) are in.
I really like your countdown timers, very nice work. Perhaps you could develope something smaller to be used as a google gadget?
Saturn Orbit Crossing: I have analyzed the JPL's Horizons system data and I now estimate that New Horizons will cross the Saturn orbit on 08 June 2008 at 08:16am SCET UTC. Saturn will reach the same point (in the xy plane) on 02 Sep 2017 15:49 Saturn time. The xy-plane error of this analysis is around 380 km.
MizarKey: Good idea ... I can look into that down the road. First I want to populate the scripts with data.
I have received a question about the definition of the Saturn orbit crossing:
UMSFers-- As of last week, New Horizons is Twittering: NewHorizons2015 is the Twitter username for those interested.
-Alan
Thanks Alan, I'm following.
Here's a direct link for lazy people.
http://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015
I'm in now too!
In, too! Can't help but wonder though - what will become of Twitter 7 years from now seeing how fast "it" things change on the net...
Argh! I was able to sign for Phoenix & LRO and can't get in here. Can remember what to do to sign in. Some help needed please
Caveman question, here...what the hell does Twitter do? I don't subscribe to jack on my cel, only hit the Net from PCs (at work it's quite limited).
Please, somebody, tell me what the flint & bearskins are good for here!
Nick, I have the same question. At first I thought it was a broadcast model where one user updates many others. But reading a recent Cassini report suggested it was more like an instant-messaging service ("For Cassini, the user submits a question or message and members of the flight team respond from the perspective of the spacecraft.") Even more confused now...
Del, it is exactly as you say.
A Twitter user can update all his followers via the web, SMS from a cellphone, or any instant messaging program.
Followers can also submit questions or comments to a Twitter account using any of the above ways.
Thanks, TC & Alan; me & Del thank you!
One sign of advancing age in the Third Millenium, unless you work at it: you eventually become a technotard. So, gonna learn the ins & outs of Twitter; might hold back the senile dementia a year or two, anyhow!
UPDATE! On 08/12/2008, at 12:10:40 UTC, the NH spacecraft reached 1600 million km from the sun. The spacecraft's distance from Earth, by comparison, is 1.511 billion km. NH is now only 3.123 billion km from Pluto and traveling at a rate of 16.767 km/s. Later!
J P
Latest NH Twitter Teet, posted today at http://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015
Solar distance now 10.77 AU. Tomorrow the Student Dust Counter begins a calibration of noise thresholds & detector gains in quiet cruise.
...Hibernation wakeup and Active Checkout for 2008 begin in just under two weeks, on Sep 2.
-Alan
Thanks for the update, Alan. It is always nice to know that you are interested in the forum.
It will be 2015 before we know it.
well 1 billion km from Jupiter and going
Wow, already? Awesome!
1.939 billion km travelled
Well, since space is actually the ultimate ocean, wouldn't saying that NH has actually traveled 1,060,258,093,055 fathoms into the deep be more apropos?
Or approximately 1.1393818 x 1012 UMSF members laid end to end
(insert your own off-color comment here)
Well, if we are trying to find the most inappropriate unit let's go all the way:
1.939 x 1022 Ångström
Nah, I think a Planck length is the most unappropriate possible unit. I'll save you from the actual number.
Distance is measured in hair-widths. Duh. Although for larger distances the preferred unit is moon-and-backs.
aww but still only 0.000055041 parsecs from the Sun ... let me check again .... mmm no, the last digit hasn't moved since ...
well we are under 3 billion Km to Pluto
I think the speed of the New Horizons probe is quite astonishing. In barely over a year from its launch, it flew by Jupiter (it took Galileo 6 years and Cassini over 3 years). Then, in about 2 and a half years from launch, it crossed the orbit of Saturn! Now less than 3 billion km to Pluto. The time will fly!!
I'm wondering when NH will cross the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. As it's scheduled to arrive at Pluto in 2015, would I be broadly correct in estimating a Uranus orbit crossing around 2011 and Neptune's around 2014?
Bingo!
NH will cross the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011. It will cross the orbit of Neptune on August 24, 2014 (one day shy of 25 years after Voyager 2 flew by the planet).
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/passingplanets/passingPlanets_current.php
The voyage of New Horizons is really is a great tool for demonstrating the vastness of the Solar System.
Considering Pluto is 40 AU from the Sun, crossing the orbit of Uranus at 20 AU in March 2011 would be about half-way...
However, considering the complete transfer NH flies, when will this golden spacecraft be half-way?
Tomorrow.
The party is planned for this evening, Boulder time!
John
iPhone app for tracking New Horizons probe.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/id373085701
Two bucks? Seems exorbitant for, effectively, a countdown clock to a single event. Especially when you can get Mars Globe for *free* right now. I might buy it if it had countdowns for significant events on more than one mission.
Another halfway point today:
Halfway Heliocentric Distance Traveled from Earth at Launch to Pluto at Flyby
June 14, 2010
16.946 AU
(from http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_05_21_2010.)
IMHO the "real" halfway point is the time one (days from launch to encounter) and that's in October. Tick, tick, tick....
....And half way from launch (19 Jan 2006) to Pluto encounter ops start (4 Jan 2015) comes next month, on July 13th.
Spaceflight now reports a small course correction for NH.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1007/02newhorizons/
If I recall correctly, NH has enjoyed a larger-than-planned surplus of fuel after launch. I'm wondering how well that's holding up, since obviously it increases the options for a KBO encounter after Pluto.
--Greg
Twice more fuel means four times more reachable places - I wonder how it translates into hoped-for sizes of encountered objects.
Excellent news regarding the fuel margin. I hope the luxury of being 'picky' about which follow on object(s) to explore occurs.
My how time flies. I can remember when NH was on the drawing boards thinking it was so far in the future as to nullify any excitement I had over it. But wow, just five years. Marking it on my Outlook calendar now.
5 years to go...wow. Seems like launch was literally yesterday; must be getting old!
There is a new release on the New Horizons web site with distant images of Jupiter and Neptune
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20100727.php
Whoua! I would have said a Venus like picture instead of a Moon like picture... and Nasa has invented a new mesurement unit: LORRI Pixels
I see New Horizons has just passed another milestone - she is now 2.5bn kms from Earth
Looking at the Jupiter image, my impression is that it was "brightened", as in reduced contrast (well, reduced compared to how it's normally reproduced) to show the Galilean satellites. This would also bring out low level noise, especially ratty noise like that given the really short exposure setting.
The detector and its gain isn't optimized for such short (9 ms) exposures, it was optimized for an order of magnitude longer exposures needed at Pluto. Even in the Jupiter flyby images it could be seen the images are distinctly noisier when exposure was kept shorter to avoid too much saturation.
The shot noise in the background could also be due to scattered light from looking that close to the sun.
In short, the conditions were far from optimal for LORRI.
Summarized, would it be correct to say;
In terms of distance, New Horizons was half-way in February 2010… in terms of travel time, New Horizons would be half-way in March 2011?
Software (and, actually) hardware sustainment is a universal problem.
I'll get my hat.
Thank-you john_s, I didn't realise that the smear was quite so bad! Do you just use a naive subtraction or deconvolution type approach (or something a bit more advanced)? Looks like some sort of denoising approach might be necessary to help get rid of the smear removal artefacts. Might be an interesting project to play around with in my spare time
What would the one-way signal delay time be at Pluto, which will always be 5 billion kilometers away?
Could someone elaborate on Pluto's position in relation to the ecliptic, as the dwarfplanet orbits at a 17° angle to the plane.
Is the NH encounter timed so Pluto-Charon pass through the ecliptic in order to get a better change to dive further into the outer regions of the solar system towards other KBOs and possibly SDOs?
Seek and ye shall find!
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-98&vbody=10&month=7&day=14&year=2015&hour=12&minute=00&fovmul=1&rfov=90&bfov=10&porbs=1&showsc=1
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/calculator.php.
Actually we encounter Pluto pretty close to the ecliptic (Pluto crosses the ecliptic plane in late 2018, three years after the flyby). This is something of a coincidence, but does have the very useful benefit of taking us through the densest, low-inclination, part of the Kuiper Belt after the Pluto flyby, increasing the number of potential flyby targets.
I'm on both missions, so will be one of those people arguing with myself in 2015. Though I believe New Horizons already has its DSN time booked, at least for the critical period around closest approach.
John
So you can actually book the DSN five years in advance? - I guess they must be using Outlook calendar then
Have you calculated which antennas in the DSN will be on the receiving side for the encounter? - Maybe some New Horizon mission members will volunteer a summer holiday to go and clean bat dung off the dishes...
Hadn't considered that the communication schedule in part dictates the observational aspect of the mission.
So, NH will start transmitting data several hours before its DSN target rotates into view. With a 13-hour delay each way, it takes quite a while for NH to get confirmation of data received.
As Wallace Shawn said in "My Dinner with Andre": mind-boggling!
That's not so bad, hehe. Thanks for the clarification
Thanks for your replies!
I thought NH could store everything and send it back several times, so dish availability should not be an issue?
Are there any space assets that could be used? I guess some department of defence satellites have rather good dishes... PS, I don't expect a reply to that one.
The best reception facilities are still on the ground. TDRSS helps with LEO assets, but not out at Pluto.
Quote "Have you calculated which antennas in the DSN will be on the receiving side for the encounter?"
From now untill 2015, both Pluto & the NH spacecraft are in the constellation Sagittarius (Archer), so the DSN must be able to point towards it
John Spencer quote: "for Pluto, Canberra delivers the most bits"
Hey John, mind if I use that line to put on a t-shirt?!
Sounds like a great motto to me.
Astro0
Canberra DSN
what is the current thinking on imaging outer planet Trojans with NH ?
http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.pl is updated every second...
[/quote]
About an hour ago NH became further away from Earth than it is Jupiter according to that website.
Neil
When I wrote my http://www.dmuller.net/newhorizons quite some time ago, I calculated that NH crosses the Neptune orbit on 24 AUG 2014, and comes to within 3.8AU of the actual Neptune L5 point on 06 NOV 2014 (that's approximate, couldn't find SPICE kernels or ephemeris for L5).
By the way, does anybody know if current New Horizons SPICE kernels are on the net (like they are for most other missions), or where I could get them from (HORIZONS uses a reference trajectory that seems a bit 'old', pre-2010 TCM)? Thanks in advance!
Also, I will look for 2008 LC18 (the first trailing Neptune trojan found) kernels/ephemeris and include in my sim in due course, though I heard that one will be too far from NH to observe.
I think the dust counter data will be the most interesting part of the L4 transit. AFAIK, this will be the first time any spacecraft has flown through a planet's L4 or L5 point (except for Earth's, of course.)
According to trajectory data in HORIZONS, New Horizons closest approach to 2008LC18 is on 01-MAY-2015 at 6.005AU
New Horizons is now no more than 2.1 trillion meters away from 134340 Pluto
Date and Time: 2010-10-06 23:19:53 Orbiter UTC
Range: 2,100,000,000,000 meters
Range-rate: -14406 meters per second
Velocity: 14406 meters per second
Can you even imagine how exciting this is going to get when NH is about 6 months out?
Where is New Horizons tonight? She's half way along the journey-- with no more days in front of us than behind us. Go New Horizons! Go exploration!
Yep, I saw that. Congratulations, Alan; here's to a smooth remaining cruise, it's all downhill from here!
GO NEW HORIZONS!!!
Where is the New Horizons Centaur Stage Now? (for release this week)
by Alan Stern and Yanping Guo
When New Horizons launched at 2pm Eastern time on 19 January 2006, its first Atlas V stage and solid rocket boosters all fell back to Earth within minutes of launch, never entering orbit.
New Horizons then proceeded on to Earth orbit aboard its Atlas V’s powerful Centaur second stage, which then re-ignited that afternoon to propel itself, New Horizons, and our STAR-48 3rd stage solid rocket to escape Earth orbit.
Just seconds after the Centaur stage completed that Earth escape maneuver, it was discarded, and New Horizons was propelled onto its Pluto trajectory by a brief (84 second) but powerful (up to 13 G!) burn of its third stage. That derelict third stage is now traveling out of the solar system in the general direction of Pluto, much like New Horizons, though it will miss Pluto by hundreds of millions of miles because it had no ability to make the course corrections to precisely target for Pluto as New Horizons itself has.
But what became of the also now derelict Centaur second stage New Horizons left behind? It’s orbiting between the Earth and the asteroid belt, with a period of 2.83 years, never reaching farther than 3 times as far from the Sun as the Earth does.
Orbital calculations reveal that the approximate current positions of New Horizons, its STAR-48 third stage, and its Centaur second stage are as shown in the figure below. Our Centaur stage is now on its second orbit of the Sun, having just past its aphelion, or greatest distance from the Sun, and is now approaching the orbit of Mars as it falls back sunward.
Hey, this is different; thanks, Alan!
I'm a bit amazed that the third stage also completed the Jupiter gravity assist and is only separated from NH by a few hundred miles at this point; hadn't really thought about that before. Makes me wonder if something like a "PCROSS" mission would be possible someday (not that I see any value from that, but it's interesting to think about.)
Yeah, I don't know where I got the 'few hundred miles'...wasn't from the graphic, swear I saw it written in the article.
Well, my brain continues to merrily rot away. Thanks for the correction, Alan & Gordan.
Any chance to get some trajectory figures or ephemeris on stage 3 (x,y,z,t would be nice) somewhere ... could add distance from NH to 3rd stage to my realtime sims!
Here you all go-- see attached for 2nd and third stage trajectories as a function of time in heliocentric coords. Enjoy!
2nd file now attached as .pdf
Beautiful! Thanks Alan.
I attached the info to the bottom-left corner of the distances box:
http://www.dmuller.net/spaceflight/realtime.php?mission=newhorizons
0.89AU at the moment. I really need to work on that layout.
Worth remembering that New Horizons crosses the orbit of Uranus today!
Just a couple of billions kms to go!
http://twitter.com/newhorizons2015/
We're crossing Uranus's orbit TOMORROW -- on now toward Neptune's! about 16 hours ago via web
Congrats to New Horizons on reaching 2000 days in space! Later!
J P
Early today we cracked the Voyager 1 distance record to Pluto. When it comes to closest, we own it now, and get closer every day.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20111202.php
Congratulations, it's hard to believe it's been 6 years already.
Yes, and encounter begins 3 years from next month.
Dang. Where did the time go? I mean seriously.
Tempis fugit...but NH 'fugits' FAST.
How about "hyperbolically"?
I honestly don't think it's so bad. The term 'exponentially' has acquired a non-mathematical sense in common parlance, meaning no more than 'at an ever-increasing rate'. Besides, the independent variable is not specified. It doesn't have to be time. It could mean 'The larger Pluto appears the faster that image will be expanding' - which is true, surely. Certainly it will expand a lot more during the second half of the remaining journey than during the first half.
Well put, Nigel; thank you.
I'd say that this particular dead horse has been beaten into an advanced state of decomposition; further blows are unnecessary.
Alan, congratulations to you and the NH team for reaching this milestone!
The long wait for the Pluto encounter raises interesting questions about the way we respond to events. It will be too slow. . until, suddenly, it's too fast! But then, thankfully, there will be the science in its own good time.
Mmm...I don't read it that way. Seems like a simple, concise (of course, since it's a tweet) repeat of Alan's explanation.
Gotta remember that the Lagrange regions are BIG, and any objects stuck in them basically are doing complex orbits around the L points themselves. So, the odds of NH encountering a Trojan, while non-zero, are definitely not good at all.
The tweet lacks the extreme qualifiers (TINY, TINY shot at it... VERY lucky... VERY close) of the post here. Is that solely because of space requirements or have chances improved to the point that qualifiers in all caps are no longer needed?
...don't get too hung up on reading the tea leaves, guys. I'm sure Alan will let us know IF (and I think it unlikely in the extreme) there's any shot at all of doing this.
Even another APL would be decent, to be perfectly honest.
But hey, that's what the Kuiper Belt phase is for, right?
Correct on both counts! I made the call some time back to give up on possible distant Trojan encounters owing to the many more things that needed to be done, and done well, to be prepared for Pluto. About SDC, we are also very interested in what it will see in L4!
Thanks Alan, much as I thought - you don't need distractions at this stage I'm sure!
NH crosses Neptune's orbit on Monday, 25 years to the day after Voyager 2 explored that planet. NASA will recognize both events, and look forward to the Pluto encounter beginning in January, with a new conference and pair of panel discussions on Monday. Flyer attached.
Definitely ducking out of work to go to this! Very much looking forward to it.
Neptune orbit crossed (of course the big blue giant is nowhere near!) http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140825.php
Webcast on NASA TV now...
I am watching the panel. Alan Stern so rocks!
The New Horizons Corps of Discovery. So cool!
What a time to be alive!
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