New Horizons: Pre-launch, launch and main cruise, Pluto and the Kuiper belt Options

[MiniTES]

I think I speak for everyone here in saying that we greatly appreciate your taking the time to answer our questions.

I second that.

[lyford]

I think I speak for everyone here in saying that we greatly appreciate your taking the time to answer our questions.

I second that.

Let me also chime in that your presence on this board is most awesome!

I think Pluto holds a special place in the public consciousness, being the "last" planet out there and the only one not directly visited by a mission yet. I have been waiting for a Pluto mission since I was a kid - and finally watching it happen, hearing the details in real time by no one less than the PI is wonderful. Tomorrow I am taking my 5th grade class to Send Your Name To Pluto and having them sign up... Let the Inner - Outer Solar System rivalry begin!

[djellison]

Perhaps we should start a thread and just submit questions to it - then if you can find someone appropriate Alan - I can string them together into a coherent set of questions that 'tell the story' fire them off in an email and then report back here?

Doug

[DEChengst]

Maybe I should assign someone to do Q&A with this site. The questions are good ones.

I think it's great to have you onboard Alan. It's so cool to be able to ask questions to the people actually working on the mission and get a response within a day. Compared to these days, Voyager happened in the dark ages. You had to wait a month for a magazine to see the first results, and ofcourse that wouldn't anwser all the question you had. Internet is a great tool to make people enthousiastic about a mission and give them something back for the tax money they pay to fund the missions. I really like the MER and Cassini rawimages website as you can use them to create your own mosaics. I hope New Horizons will do the same. If you do so I think it would be great to include some target pointing and distance information in the filename as this would really help us amateurs to find matching images to create mosaics from. MER includes a lot of info in the filename which is great, Cassini does not which makes them harder to use.

A lot of visitors on this forum also hang out on IRC in #space at irc.freenode.net. Perhaps you would like to join some time for an interactive question and anwser session ?

[Roby72]

Alan,

I also most appreciate your interest in our forum. Its fantastic to see the progress in building NH as a real spacecraft, after this long series of troubles.

Therefore I have my own special question - sometimes in the late 80s there was a mission called TAU on the drawboards of NASA I believe. It would have a ion engine to reach 1000 A.U. and this far away point should enabled the TAU-craft to obtain extremely precise astrometric measurements (parallaxes out to the Magellanic clouds!). Could NH accomplish some astrometric measures out to 50 A.U. ? Is the original TAU-craft still a secret project at NASA ?

Sometimes in about 10 years from now, ESA would fly the GAIA mission, also a precise astrometric mission, but near Earth.

regards
Robert

[cIclops]

...  sometimes in the late 80s there was a mission called TAU on the drawboards of NASA I believe.

yes, it now seems to be the 400 AU Interstellar Probe concept ... lots of details here

[cIclops]

Alan has written a new piece updating the status of NH and his feelings towards the project click here

I hope we'll see more photos before the thermal blankets cover the innards.

312 days left before launch window opens

[john_s]

Hi- this is John Spencer, frequent lurker (and occasional contributor) on this forum. I'm also a New Horizons science team member, and rashly volunteered to help Alan Stern get back to running the mission by helping him answer New Horizons questions here. So fire away...

We just had a meeting of the science team here in Boulder, and we are all starting to get psyched about the fast-approaching launch. Along with several other current team members I've been working on some version of this mission since the early 1990s, and we are so used to it being a distant and hypothetical idea that it's a shock as well as a thrill to have everything becoming so real so quickly.

[cIclops]

Hi- this is John Spencer, frequent lurker (and occasional contributor) on this forum.  I'm also a New Horizons science team member, and rashly volunteered to help Alan Stern get back to running the mission by helping him answer New Horizons questions here.  So fire away...

Welcome john_s !

I must say it is refreshing to have real project people willing to subject themselves to this type of free for all discussion. It's not only an opportunity for those of us on the outside to interact and learn but also a way for us to feel a part of the adventure. Stand by for the first shot ....



NET 307 days to launch

[lyford]

Welcome John - let the interrogation begin!

[clemmentine]

Thank you, john_s, for taking the time to answer our questions.

According to the New Horizons website, NH will be 11,095 km from Pluto at closest approach. Isn't that inside the orbit of Charon since the pair is 19,600 km apart (according to here)?
I seem to remember that at one time, it was thought that Pluto's atmosphere may envelop Charon. Is that no longer considered likely or is the Pluto CA distance preliminary and can be changed via TCMs?

[john_s]

According to the New Horizons website, NH will be 11,095 km from Pluto at closest approach.  Isn't that inside the orbit of Charon ...
I seem to remember that at one time, it was thought that Pluto's atmosphere may envelop Charon.  Is that no longer considered likely or is the Pluto CA distance preliminary and can be changed via TCMs?

That's funny, we were just talking in the hallway yesterday about how we might get close enough to Pluto to detect some deceleration of the spacecraft due to Pluto's atmosphere- not sure yet if that's possible though I suspect the effect will be negligible. The atmosphere is indeed pretty extended, due to the low gravity, and one of the spacecraft's tasks is to estimate its escape rate via Pluto's perturbation to the solar wind. At 11,000 km altitude the atmosphere will pose no risk to the spacecraft.

You're right that we can easily change the flyby altitude, and the current value is just a working number. Coming closer gives better measurements of Pluto's gravity and solar wind perturbations, but makes imaging more difficult due increased smear rates and slew times.

[Alan Stern]

Sports fans-- Updated NH mission and payload Powerpoints presentations have been posted at www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb

Enjoy.

Onward to 2006,
-Alan

[cIclops]

Updated NH mission and payload Powerpoints presentations have been posted at www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb

Yummy, thanks!

According to the Mission Overview (24MB) the observatory phase begins C/A - 4 weeks and the post encounter studies last 2 weeks, why are these periods so different?

[Alan Stern]

Outbound is less interesting. as Pluto is a crescent, and already explored at high-resolution on approach. About 2 weeks post-encounter we do the KBO targeting maneuver, and then begin the less hectic, final observation phase for pluto-Charon.