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

[hendric]

Yes NH has only 20/1000 of the resolving power of Keck but Keck has to peer through the atmosphere and NH will be right inside the Kuiper belt. What is the smallest KBO resolvable by Keck at 60AU - 100 kms? NH will have better resolving power than Keck for at least an AU in all directions *continuously* for several years.  An automated onboard survey would greatly reduce the load on that narrow data pipe.  Imaging the Kuiper dust should yield information about the object density assuming that it is generated by collision processes.

A survey of smaller KBOs should be possible with NH that is beyond Keck's capability to compete. In any case NH needs something to keep it busy once it has finished its KBO flyby

I did some thinking and here's what I came up with:

1. Being closer to the KB makes the KBOs brighter by a factor of (40/1)^2.
2. NH light collecting area is only (20/1000)^2 of Keck

So overall, for KBs at 1AU from NH and 40 AU from Keck, you get a .64 factor.

3. Differences in size/technology of CCDs at Keck and on NH. I have to give this one to Keck since they can continuously update their tech, and go with enormous CCD arrays.
4. Cosmic ray hits would go way up that far away, I assume.
5. Time sharing. Keck isn't 100% searching for KBOs. NH could be, though. This would help mitigate 2 and 4.
6. Velocity while searching. The high speed needed to get to the KB would tend to smear any pointlike KBO into something resembling a cosmic ray. My best guess is that at 13km/s your typical KBO at 1AU is going to be a streak about 15 arc seconds long on your CCD in a 5 minute shot. This is bad because you split up the KBOs light across several pixels, and that streak now resembles a cosmic ray hit.
7. You'll have lots of power (cpu and RTG) with nothing to do, so you could take lots of pictures, offset them by what you would expect for a KBO streak at various distances and directions, and see what pops out when you add them up. I remember reading about a paper where they did a KBO search like this, by creating an "orbit space" and moving around a series of pictures and summing them to see what popped out of the noise. You could do this with a fairly large number of images. As amateur astronomers know, you get a sqrt(#of images) improvement to the picture.
8. The area near the spacecraft is probably going to be well-searched from the ground by the time it gets to the KB. By that time, 30m telescopes should be operational, I think.

But if you're going to spend the time to look for dust anyways...

[Jeff7]

Kind of OT here, but I'd love to see them strap some solar sails onto the NH probe. Either that, or else do another probe for it. A solar sail craft might be going fairly fast by the time it'd make a pass by Pluto. Or maybe not, I don't know much about their actual acceleration rates, and max speeds. If there were enough light for it, deploy the sails after the Pluto flyby, and race out of the solar system in style.

[Chmee]

I do too.  I would like to see a Galileo-2 type mission.  It could probably be developed more quickly than a Europa orbiter.  With a high data rate and a very large data recorder, it could really send back some incredible shots

Just make sure though that the High Gain Antenna on a Galileo-2 works...

[tedstryk]

That is definitely true. When one looks at the coverage of the moon Galileo obtained during its Earth flyby, one can only dream of what it could have returned from Jupiter with a working antenna. What would be really cool is to send a Cassini class mission a la Voyager - with two cloned spacecraft, and a much larger data recorder than Cassini has. The two orbiters would flyby the four galileans (and perhaps encouter Amalthea and or Thebe during Jupiter orbit insertion) for four to six years. Then one of the spacecraft would use gravity assists to insert itself into Europa orbit. The other would conduct repeat Io flybies until the damage became so severe from the radiation that it would be crashed into Io.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Well, then, you'll be pleased to know that the second-decade set of candidates for New Frontiers-class missions includes an "Io Observer" and a "Ganymede Observer", each of which would observe those moons during multiple close flybys in Jupiter orbit. The latter could easily be expanded to include Callisto. Indeed, it might be possible to design a mission that made repeated flyby observations of all 3 moons -- except that, to greatly reduce its radiation exposure and maximize the number of working Io flybys, you want the Io orbiter to be in a polar Jupiter orbit, which makes flybys of Ganymede and Callisto far harder to achieve with the same spacecraft. (Since it proved impossible to design a New Frontiers-cost mission that would include both a Jupiter polar orbiter and multiple entry probes, a Jupiter flyby with 3 entry probes is another candidate for a second-decade NF mission.)

[tedstryk]

Well, then, you'll be pleased to know that the second-decade set of candidates for New Frontiers-class missions includes an "Io Observer" and a "Ganymede Observer", each of which would observe those moons during multiple close flybys in Jupiter orbit.  The latter could easily be expanded to include Callisto.  Indeed, it might be possible to design a mission that made repeated flyby observations of all 3 moons -- except that, to greatly reduce its radiation exposure and maximize the number of working Io flybys, you want the Io orbiter to be in a polar Jupiter orbit, which makes flybys of Ganymede and Callisto far harder to achieve with the same spacecraft.  (Since it proved impossible to design a New Frontiers-cost mission that would include both a Jupiter polar orbiter and multiple entry probes, a Jupiter flyby with 3 entry probes is another candidate for a second-decade NF mission.)

That is great to hear. Another possibility is to include proper instruments to study Io from afar on the Ganymede and Callisto mission. Then, a la Galileo, if it lasts a long time, bring it in to Io for as many flybys as it can stomach.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

.....second decade? lol

My vote goes to the Io observor.

[cIclops]

As usual good news travels slower than the speed of bad news but it's finally arrived in this new update from Alan Stern, PI for NH.

115 Days to launch (in Hex)

[odave]

115 Days to launch (in Hex)

...and after that, 72 months to Pluto-Charon encounter (in Hex)

[Alan Stern]

Just for fun, see attached.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[DEChengst]

I noticed that both New Horizons and Rosetta will carry an UV imaging spectrometer called Alice. The New Horizon websites says that the version used on Rosetta is a less sophisticated version than the one used on NH. I'm wondering what enhanchements were made to Alice fitted on New Horizons.

[hendric]

Alan,
Has your team determined plans for availability of raw images on the web? I know the first encounter is still quite a ways away, but I'm hoping you continue the trend of MER and Cassini.

[Alan Stern]

New Horizons Alice has more redundancy. It also has a different passband (465-1880 A
for Pluto, vis 700-2050 A) and better optics. Most importantly, Pluto-Alice has a Solar Occultation Channel to probe the atmosphere with the powerful UV beam from the Sun.

[djellison]

Just  for fun, see attached.

OK - who's is the Frankenstein poster

I remember seing an inflatable alien during MPL ATLO, but this is something else

Doug

[Alan Stern]

Just  for fun, see attached.

OK - who's is the Frankenstein poster

I remember seing an inflatable alien during MPL ATLO, but this is something else

Doug

That's a safety poster; I don't know who put it up-- probably QA.