Primary launch window for New Horizons is January 11 - February 14, 2006. If the spacecraft roars skyward within the first 18 days of that window, scooting by Jupiter for a gravity assist, it will reach Pluto in 2015.

"It’ll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter…13 months after launch," Stern said. "We pass the Moon in just nine hours."

Wow, just 9 hours to Moon How fast travel the spaceship 400,000 km/9 hours = 44,444 k/h = 12.34 km/sec. The previous astronaut must bear more than 3 days to reach moon.

The nuclear powered spaceship with 20 years of operation is really cheap against a widelly published a relatively cheap Phoenix Scout with $386 million for only no more than 5 months. The cost of New Horizons, including the launch vehicle and operations through the Pluto-Charon encounter, will be roughly $650 million.

More information article New Horizons Pluto Probe from space.com

If you want to send your name to Pluto!!! Visit and register at at New Horizons Web Server

Rodolfo

Pioneer 10 took eleven whole hours to pass Luna's orbit in 1972.

As I recall, the fastest an Apollo ever traversed the distance between Earth and Moon was about 56 hours -- and that was Apollo 8's homeward journey. (With no LM, they had more fuel remaining when it came to TEI, and they burned a little longer to get home a little sooner.) However, due to vagaries of trajectories, the Apollo 10 crew were the fastest, reaching a slightly higher velocity just prior to entry interface than any other Apollo crew ever managed.

-the other Doug

The astronaut had the disadvantage that it tried to orbit or even land on the moon.

As I am new with the space and am starting to understand about the space limitations.

Our actual problem is that with the present technology, the space must carry kilograms of combustion to space in order to break there (Hoffman Delta-V). It is understandable that it is very expensive to send extra kilograms to space for the breaking process. The solution must be that the space is able to generate braking force without having to carry the extra kilograms. Now, we have ion electric engine but it is not enough to break for a high speed of above than many kilometers/sec. Now I know at the present time there are many man working to overcome this.

Rodolfo

Electric propulsion systems are exclusively low-thrust systems, meaning that you can never give an instant delta-V like with chemical propulsion systems.

If you want to orbit another body using low-thrust systems, you need to start breaking very early, or just arrive very gradually. See for instance the SMART-1 mission. It was captured by the moon after continuously increasing the size of the earth orbit.

The advantage of electric propulsion lies with its fuel-efficiency, i.e. you need far less fuel and can therefore reach much higher accelarations with the same fuel mass.

But I think we are drifting off-topic here. maybe good for another thread?

Don't compare it to Apollo, which wanted to stop at the moon, compare it to Voyager 1, which was on a similar flight plan to New Horizons.

Thanks to ljk4-1, dvandorn, remcook and antoniseb for the interesting replies. I agree that these replies are not of 100% focused on the above topic and somewhat related. At the beginning of this topic there were a very good comments between Doug and Marcel about the Delta-V for News Horizon to be captured by Pluto. The only solution what I have in the mind is that the spaceship can travel as fast as possible and be able to insert into the orbit is by sending two parts. The first part with enough combustible cargo to brake the News Horizon spacecraft before inserting to Pluto must be launched with anticipated time and with lower speed so that the spacecraft New Horizons which is launched later at with higher speed be able to catch it and dock it at the calculated distance previous reaching to Pluto for speed, mass and Delta-V in order to insert into the Pluto Orbit.

However, now I see, according to Bruce's note', is that the objective of the mission is not to only visit to Pluto but also to visit others "asteroides" or "planets" of Kipus Belt Oordt. Hence, the New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Pluto and the moon Charon in the interval of 2 hours. So short time to capture all needed information ? to take pictures on all surfaces, take spectometer and magnetometer for all surface too? with just only 2 hours??? at the closest distance.

The other thing that I am uncomfortable is that none has told which "asteroide" or "planet" is New Horizons spacecraft is planning to visit...after Pluto. I guess it will scan for any to discover on its way like Voyager in reaching to heliosphere...

Rodolfo

Rodolfo:

To get out there in a reasonable timescale does require a fast flyby of the target, although it *would* be possible to design a spacecraft with an engine aboard which would allow it's velocity to be cut before making a flyby (as was indeed the plan with the Advanced Mariner studies, in order to give more time in contact with the (short-lived) Mariner Mars Lander, and you could even say that the current Japanese comet probe is adopting something like that approach). Maybe such a scheme would be possible in the future, but for now we must be glad for what we're going to get - New Horizons is lucky to fly at all.

As regards post-Pluto targets, there was an earlier discussion on here where either Alan Stern or one of his colleagues commented on the expected levels of hydrazine at EOM and the potential 'cone' of encounters. My understanding is that despite the fact that there will be some Delta-V capability left, it's down to brute chance in large part, and (hopefully) some hard work before encounter, as the Pluto encounter geometry itself offers the greatest single opportunity to change the trajectory. Obviously, there'll be a tradeoff between Pluto science and potential KBO science which will be addressed closer to the time, just as with Voyager.

Bob Shaw

I couldn't help noticing in a recent magazine article that 2003 UB313 is 'kind of in the same direction' (stop me if I'm getting too technical) as Pluto. I know the orbital inclinations are very different, but is 2003 UB313 completely out of the question as a target for New Horizons? Judging by its distance it might take another fifteen or twenty years to reach after the Pluto encounter, so I'd imagine there might be problem with RTG power after that length of time.

Anthony

RTG is not the problem. Voyager still goes strong after decades. The question is; will there be any KBO within the reachable "cone" NH can be directed towards after the Pluto encounter. I guess the geometry of the flyby (and the change in direction of the spacecraft due to the flyby) is of great influence on how much flexibility there is in the path afterwards. My feeling (i'm not a rocket scientist) says, that a target KBO has to be chosen by 2014, then the way Pluto is encountered has to be chosen such, that it flies more or less towards the KBO afterwards without intervention of the left over delta V capability. The latter being used only for two or three short burns to fine-tune it towards the KBO.

It would be great if it would be 2003 UB313, i have no clue however whether it's in the same direction as Pluto is.

Anyone else knows if it will be in more or less the same direction as Pluto by that time ?

My recollection is that the delta V capability is in the order of about 100-150 m/s in addition to any change in direction induced by the encounter. That equates to a very small cone of accessabilty at 17.8? km/s, so tanQ=.15/17.8. It would have to be more rather than less in line with Pluto. It would be a coincidence of very low probability

Quote from
http://www.roe.ac.uk/~jkd/kbo_proc/antospencerfigs.doc
Conclusions
Finding one or more KBO targets for the New Horizons mission is a large but tractable endeavor. We will need to search down to magnitude 27 to be sure of finding at least one target if we are unlucky in the amount of maneuvering fuel available on the spacecraft for KBO targeting, though with plausible fuel budgets, surveys magnitude to 26 may be sufficient. The amount of telescope time required for the survey depends on the severity of the effects of confusion by Milky Way background stars, but it is likely that a comprehensive survey early in the next decade can be done in reasonable time using large-format detectors on 8-meter class telescopes. New Horizons team plans its own searches for mission KBOs but will welcome other U.S. or international teams who wish to become involved in exchange for mission participation at the KBO.

That means it can redirect ONE degree after the Pluto flyby on it's own propulsion. That's not much.
I guess the assist from Pluto has to do the thing.

Correction
I think it is only 11.8km/s so the angle is a bit larger but not much

There's one remaining (quite important) question left for me: How much angular change is to be expected due to the flyby ? And is there any flexibility in it (by changing altitude of the flyby for example) ?

And eh, one more: is it already determined how the flyby geometry will be (which altitude, what side, what projected path on the surface, longitude, latitude....etc.) or can it be detailed further during the months or weeks before closest approach while the first details of the planet come in ?