New Horizons, Pluto and the Kuiper belt Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

By "much better spectra", of course I mean in spectral resolution -- obviously they'll be pretty much whole-disk spectra, unlike Galileo's; but their spectral resolution will be so much better that they have a good chnce of revealing new surface constituents.

[Alan Stern]

The LORRI imager's resolution on Io, depending on where it is in its orbit will be between roughly 12 and 15 km per pixel at closest approach.

[tedstryk]

That should be good to look for changes at smaller scales than can be seen from earth since I32

[DEChengst]

I attended the 2003 DPS meeting -- and, specifically, the special session on science goals for NH's Jupiter flyby. The impression I got is that the most interesting aspect of that flyby will be, not its imaging of the moons, but its near-IR spectra of them -- which will be much better than those from either Galileo or Cassini (better instrument than the former; much closer than the latter), and may well provide us with very interesting new data on their surface compositions.

How about the resolution it will get on Jupiter ? Will it beat this splendid mosaic made by Cassini:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA04866.jpg

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Oh, yes -- although, since NH's bit rate will be far lower than Cassini's, it won't make nearly as MANY mosaics of Jupiter.

[cIclops]

Oh, yes -- although, since NH's bit rate will be far lower than Cassini's, it won't make nearly as MANY mosaics of Jupiter.

What will be the maximum data transmission rate at Jupiter?

315 days to first launch opportunity

[tedstryk]

New Horizons does have much more storage capacity than Cassini. So it could perhaps store a lot of stuff onboard for more boring parts of the cruise.

[Alan Stern]

New Horizons will be able to transmit at 37 Kbps from Jupter, and a little over 1 Kbps from Pluto. The s/c has redundent 64 Gbit solid state recorders.

As to Jupiter imaging resolution, color images made near closest approach (C/A) will be
of a resolution comparable to the Cassini image posted above. Panchromatic images will be about 3X better. However in both cases the imagers are very senstivie, having
been designed for optimal perfomance at 32 AU. As such, there is likely to be
overexposure in regions away from the terminator near C/A.

[tedstryk]

You mentioned a distant Centaur flyby. Assuming the launch date doesn't change, what do you mean by distant? 1 million km? 50 million km?

[Alan Stern]

Ted,

2002 GO will be 2.7 AU awa-- good OpNav practice and a chance to get a solid phase
curve. We will search along the path for better (closer) candidates after launch, but
Monte Carlo sims tell us not to expect anything close enough to generate real maps
unless we get incredibly lucky.

[MiniTES]

Has any thought been given to what Kupier Belt objects might be encountered after launch? How close might those flybys be? Or does that also depend on the launch date?

[Alan Stern]

A lot of work has gone into KBO flyby planning. NH1 can probably only get
to 1 or maybe 2 KBOs, and those will be small, i.e., Eros-sized or a bit
smaller. This is because after we leave Pluto-Charon, we can only
maneuver 100 m/s or so off this course, which means turning only ~0.1 deg.

(NH2 can hit a large KBO because we can target it from Jupiter or Uranus
as the "substitute" first target for Pluto.)

We will not choose the first NH1 target KBO until about 2012, because
we will have much better knowledge of KBOs by then in general, and
the possible targets along our trajectory in particular.

-Alan

[djellison]

Now leave the man alone so he can go and finish it before Jan '06

Doug

[Alan Stern]

Doug- Thanks, I do have a day job-- in fact, three of them by last count. Maybe I should assign someone to do Q&A with this site. The questions are good ones.

-Alan

[tedstryk]

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