New Horizons: Voyage To The Edge Of The Solar System
Artist's impression of the New Horizons spacecraft
encountering a Kuiper Belt object.
Image source: NASA
encountering a Kuiper Belt object.
Image source: NASA
Leonard David writes on Space.com:
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is nearing a liftoff into the unknown. This first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt—a distant district of ancient, icy, rocky objects on the solar system’s outer banks—is assured to transmit back to Earth numbers of revelations.
Now being groomed for sendoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, New Horizons has a 35-day launch window that opens January 11, 2006. The probe would start a decade of cruising to reach the Pluto system, arriving on the scene as early as summer 2015.
Getting a spacecraft en route to Pluto has not been easy. The march to that remote world has been dogged by budget battles, funding slashes, start-and-stop mission planning and hardware building.
But now the Pluto-bound craft is assembled, tested, and primed for an extraordinary expedition to the edge of the solar system.
posted by Fergie @ 11/23/2005 06:30:00 AM
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