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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Successful Launch of the New Horizons Mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Jan. 19 (UPI) -- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 2 p.m. EST Thursday, beginning its 10-year mission to a rendezvous with Pluto in 2015.

"New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to the very edge of our solar system," mission control announced at launch from Florida.

After two days of weather-related delays, the probe was boosted into space aboard an Atlas V rocket. At top speed, the spacecraft will travel 13 miles per second, or nearly 47,000 miles per hour.

The first 13 months of the mission will include spacecraft and instrument checkouts, instrument calibrations and trajectory correction maneuvers, NASA said.

There also will be rehearsals for an encounter with Jupiter in the spring of 2007, during which the giant planet will provide a slingshot-like gravity boost that could save New Horizons up to three years of flight time.

That encounter will be followed by an approximately 8-year interplanetary cruise to its flyby of Pluto and the planet's moon, Charon.

NASA will hold a press conference in about one hour to discuss the successful launch of its New Horizons probe bound for the planet Pluto and beyond.

"The vehicle looks to be right where it needs to be," NASA launch manager Omar Baez, said after the launch. "It was Mother Nature that was holding us back earlier, but we got through it."

Today's launch marked the third attempt by NASA to loft New Horizons toward Pluto.

High wind speeds at the probe's launch pad at Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida forced launch officials to call off a space shot just minutes before liftoff on Tuesday. Nature revealed its ugly side again on Wednesday, when severe storms in Maryland prevented a Florida launch when they knocked out power at New Horizons' mission control center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. The laboratory is managing the mission for NASA.

About the size of a grand piano, New Horizons is the first spacecraft ever destined to visit the planet Pluto. The probe should fly past the Moon at about 11:00 p.m. EST (0800 Jan. 20 GMT) before heading toward a Jupiter flyby in early 2007

A countdown timeline here from Space.com: www.space.com/missionlaunches/0601_pluto_newhorizons_archive.html

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I'm still amazed at the nine hour trip it will take to pass the moon!

[Maddad]

How many days did it take the Lunar astronauts? Four?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Three days to the Moon.

I think it's incredible that this probe whipped past the Moon is just Nine Hours!

Pretty soon it will be only an hour to the Moon!!...

[Maddad]

Gimme a Stargate and I'll cut that down even more.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA's New Horizons mission Launched

The US space agency (Nasa) successfully launched its New Horizons mission to Pluto

19 January 2006

The probe lifted off at aboard an Atlas 5 rocket on a 10-year journey to the planet, some five billion kilometres (three billion miles) from Earth.

The $700m probe will gather information on Pluto and its moons before - it is hoped - pressing on to explore other objects in the outer Solar System.

Pluto is the only remaining planet that has never been visited by a spacecraft.

The spacecraft was launched after being postponed for two consecutive days due to bad weather and technical difficulties.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

New Horizons Crosses The Asteroid Belt

Boulder CO (SPX) Jun 02, 2006
New Horizons has entered the main asteroid belt and will be traversing this part of our solar system through August. May, like April, was a busy month for New Horizons' instrument payload commissioning. In particular, our instruments LORRI, PEPSSI, Alice and Ralph all continued their in in-flight checkouts.

In addition, the spacecraft itself received a new suite of onboard fault-protection autonomy software, resolving a number of needed bug fixes discovered in ground and flight testing.

We continue to see software-induced guidance computer resets once or twice per month on average, but the spacecraft recovers flawlessly from these, without any interruption to plans. New software for this computer is in the works and will resolve the bug that causes this; we expect to have it tested and aboard the spacecraft around Oct. 1.

Highlights of our payload-commissioning activities included door openings for PEPSSI (May 3), Alice (May 20) and Ralph (May 29). The Student Dust Counter registered each of these events at the precise time of the door openings by the noise they made on the spacecraft.

Each of these instruments also saw first light, i.e., detecting signals from stars (Ralph) or the interplanetary medium (PEPSSI and Alice). From these tests we appear to have a little higher-than-spec sensitivity with Ralph's color and panchromatic cameras.

By July Fourth, we'll be 3 AU from the Sun. Although the sunlight there is still 100 times as strong as it is on the brightest day at Pluto, it'll be about 10 times dimmer than at Earth's orbit. Less than six months into a 114 month journey to Pluto, New Horizons is beginning to reach the cooler thermal conditions it was designed to thrive in!

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This thing is sure moving fast!

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Pluto-Bound, Student-Built Dust Detector Renamed "Venetia," Honoring Girl Who Named Ninth Planet

The student-built science instrument on NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto has been renamed to honor one of astronomy's most famous students – the "little girl" who named the ninth planet more than 75 years ago.

For the rest of the New Horizons spacecraft's voyage to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond, the Student Dust Counter – the first science instrument on a NASA planetary mission to be designed, built and operated by students – will be known as the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC), or "Venetia" for short. The tag honors Venetia Burney Phair, who at age 11 offered the name "Pluto" for the newly discovered ninth planet in 1930.

"It's fitting that we name an instrument built by students after Mrs. Phair, who was just a grade-school student herself in England when she made her historic suggestion of a name for Pluto," says Dr. Alan Stern, the New Horizons mission principal investigator, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. "It's also a great honor to recognize Mrs. Phair for her historic, early role in the saga of the ninth planet."

"I feel quite astonished, and to have an instrument named after me is an honor," says Venetia Burney Phair, now 87 and living in Epsom, England. "I never dreamt when I was 11, that after all these years, people would still be thinking about this and even sending a probe to Pluto. It's remarkable."

More here: www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=20232

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How cool that Venetia is around to enjoy it. And her name is so planetary too...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

New Horizons Spacecraft Snaps Approach Image of the Giant Planet

Laurel MD (SPX) Sep 27, 2006
Blazing along its path to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons has come within hailing distance of Jupiter. The first picture of the giant planet from the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken Sept. 4, is a tantalizing promise of what's to come when New Horizons flies through the Jupiter system early next year.

New Horizons was still 291 million kilometers (nearly 181 million miles) away from Jupiter when LORRI took this image. As New Horizons comes much closer, next January and February, LORRI will take more-detailed images.

"These first LORRI images of Jupiter are awe-inspiring," says New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where LORRI was designed and built. "New Horizons is speeding toward this majestic planet at 45,000 miles per hour, right on target for a close encounter on February 28 of next year.

LORRI's resolution at Jupiter will be 125 times better than now, and we're really looking forward to getting the most detailed views of the Jovian system since Cassini's flyby in late 2000 and Galileo's final images in 2003."

LORRI snapped this image during a test sequence to help prepare for the Jupiter encounter observations. It was taken close to solar opposition, meaning that the Sun was almost directly behind the camera when it spied Jupiter.

This makes Jupiter appear blindingly bright, about 40 times brighter than Pluto will be for LORRI's primary observations when New Horizons encounters the Pluto system in 2015. To avoid saturation, the camera's exposure time was kept to 6 milliseconds. This image was, in part, a test to see how well LORRI would operate with such a short exposure time.

"LORRI's first Jupiter image is all we could have expected," says LORRI Principal Investigator Andy Cheng, of APL. "We see belts, zones and large storms in Jupiter's atmosphere. We see the Jovian moons Io and Europa, as well as the shadows they cast on Jupiter. It is most gratifying to detect these moons against the glare from Jupiter."

LORRI wasn't the only New Horizons instrument peeking at Jupiter on Sept. 4; the Ralph imager also performed some important calibrations. "We rapidly scanned Ralph's Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera [MVIC] across Jupiter to test a technique we plan to employ near closest approach next February. We also observed Jupiter in the infrared using Ralph's Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array [LEISA]," says Ralph Program Manager Cathy Olkin, of the Southwest Research Institute. "Everything worked great."

New Horizons won't observe Jupiter again until early January 2007, when periodic monitoring will begin, followed by intensive observations at the end of February. The spacecraft will also continue to look at the Jovian magnetosphere for several months after closest approach.

"New Horizons is headed to a spectacular science encounter with the Jupiter system early next year," says mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "The first LORRI images of Jupiter just whet our appetite for the observations to come."

Source: www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Horizons_Spacecraft_Snaps_Approach_Image_of_the_Giant_Planet_999.html

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This reminds my of the Pioneer/Voyager missions...taking images on the way to interstellar space.

Great to have the Chicago Astronomer name on board the spacecraft!... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Pluto Sighted For First Time By New Horizons From Four Billion Kilometers Away

The images appear pixilated because they were obtained in a mode that compensates for the drift in spacecraft pointing over long exposure times.

Washington DC (SPX) Nov 29, 2006
The New Horizons team got a faint glimpse of the mission's distant, main planetary target when one of the spacecraft's telescopic cameras spotted Pluto for the first time. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took the pictures during an optical navigation test on Sept. 21-24, and stored them on the spacecraft's data recorder until their recent transmission back to Earth.

Seen at a distance of about 4.2 billion kilometers (2.6 billion miles) from the spacecraft, Pluto is little more than a faint point of light among a dense field of stars. But the images prove that the spacecraft can find and track long-range targets, a critical capability the team will use to navigate New Horizons toward 2,500-kilometer wide Pluto and, later, one or more 50-kilometer sized Kuiper Belt objects.

Mission scientists knew they had Pluto in their sights when LORRI detected an unresolved "point" in Pluto's predicted position, moving at the planet's expected motion across the constellation of Sagittarius near the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

"We'll have to wait until early 2015 for LORRI to return better views of Pluto than have ever been seen before. In the meantime, we're looking forward to viewing the marvels of the Jupiter system this coming January and February."

Source: www.spacedaily.com/reports/Pluto_Sighted_For_First_Time_By_New_Horizons_From_Four_Billion_Kilometers_Away_999.html

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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA's Pluto Probe Prepares for Jupiter Flyby

NASA’s New Horizons probe bound for Pluto is headed for a Jupiter flyby, its camera eyes wide open, in preparation for its swing out towards the fringe of the solar system.

New Horizons began taking black-and-white images of Jupiter and scanning the planet’s icy moon Callisto in the infrared this week as it prepares for a close encounter with the gas giant next month.

“They’re certainly all we could have hoped for,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said Thursday of the new Jupiter images. “We’re still 100 million kilometers out. We’re going to get 50 times closer, but they are very nice.”

The images are expected to be released next week. NASA officials also plan to hold a press briefing on the New Horizons mission on Jan. 18.

New Horizons has been billed as NASA’s fastest mission to date. The probe is set to make its closest pass by Jupiter on Feb. 28, just over one year after its Jan. 19, 2006 launch, and swing within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) of the gas giant.

Source: www.space.com/missionlaunches/070112_newhorizons_update.html

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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Io's Volcanic Plumes

This dramatic image of Io was taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons at 11:04 Universal Time on February 28, 2007, just about 5 hours after the spacecraft's closest approach to Jupiter. The distance to Io was 2.5 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) and the image is centered at 85 degrees west longitude. At this distance, one LORRI pixel subtends 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) on Io.

This processed image provides the best view yet of the enormous 290-kilometer (180-mile) high plume from the volcano Tvashtar, in the 11 o'clock direction near Io's north pole. The plume was first seen by the Hubble Space Telescope two weeks ago and then by New Horizons on February 26; this image is clearer than the February 26 image because Io was closer to the spacecraft, the plume was more backlit by the Sun, and a longer exposure time (75 milliseconds versus 20 milliseconds) was used. Io's dayside was deliberately overexposed in this picture to image the faint plumes, and the long exposure also provided an excellent view of Io's night side, illuminated by Jupiter. The remarkable filamentary structure in the Tvashtar plume is similar to details glimpsed faintly in 1979 Voyager images of a similar plume produced by Io's volcano Pele. However, no previous image by any spacecraft has shown these mysterious structures so clearly.

The image also shows the much smaller symmetrical fountain of the plume, about 60 kilometers (or 40 miles) high, from the Prometheus volcano in the 9 o'clock direction. The top of a third volcanic plume, from the volcano Masubi, erupts high enough to catch the setting Sun on the night side near the bottom of the image, appearing as an irregular bright patch against Io's Jupiter-lit surface. Several Everest-sized mountains are highlighted by the setting Sun along the terminator, the line between day and night.

This is the last of a handful of LORRI images that New Horizons is sending "home" during its busy close encounter with Jupiter - hundreds of images and other data are being taken and stored onboard. The rest of the images will be returned to Earth over the coming weeks and months as the spacecraft speeds along to Pluto.

Source: pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/030107.html

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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Tvashtar!/center]

In this amazing animation from the New Horizons flyby of Jupiter, the 330-kilometer-high plume erupting from Io's Tvashtar volcano is visibly in motion, its fountains of lava spraying up, out, and back down to the Ionian surface. The animation contains five images taken over an eight-minute span of time beginning at 23:50 UT on March 1, 2007. Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

Source: www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000972/

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An alien landscape, with very Earthlike characteristics.

A great video.