New Horizon Instrument Capabilities Options

[Tom Tamlyn]

During the press conference recorded on January 15 (rebroadcasted on NASA TV this morning), several of the New Horizons instruments have been described as the most capable ever carried for a planetary reconnaissance. For "reconnaissance" I guess we should understand "fly-by," i.e., the instruments are more powerful than those carried by the Pioneers & Voyagers.

It would be interesting to learn how they compare with the corresponding instruments on Cassini & Galileo, with their much higher payloads.

TTT

Edit: I just heard Craig Covault from Aviation Week catch this issue, but he didn't pursue the comparison beyond Voyager & Pioneer.

This post has been edited by Tom Tamlyn: Jan 18 2006, 06:08 PM

[edstrick]

Voyager 1 would not have been retargeted for Pluto even if they hadn't "done" Titan, because a very high mission requirement for the mission was radio occultation studies of the rings, which (unless my memory has failed) was done by Voyager 1 and could not be done by 2 because of it's trajectory.

A Voyager would have done about as well at Pluto as they did at Triton which was amazingly well, considering the light levels. But the spectrometers did not do nearly as well as the cameras, especially the infrared one. The low temperatures shifted the peak emission to longer wavelengths, and required much longer integration times to get any data.

If a Voyager had done Pluto, unless Pluto's hiding a "spectacular" we can't guess now, we'd be sending the first Neptune orbiter out, probably, though maybe not for a few more years.

Also.. remember.. While Voyager 2 did the "grand tour", it was not designed for it. The originally planned mission was -- without a formal project name, it never got that far -- TOPS The Outer Planets Spacecraft. Designed with more redundancy, and instruments designed to work better beyond Saturn, there were ideally going to be 3, with the third one going on to Pluto. It was way $$$, and got descoped down to Mariner Jupiter Saturn, later renamed Voyager. I don't recall what they were going to launch it on, as Voyagers required the Titan 3, which was our largest launch vehicle by the time they flew, and I assume TOPS was going to be heavier.