Washington (AFP) – After nine years of travel, the US probe New Horizons came close to Pluto and out Saturday from hibernation to prepare to launch the first exploration of the dwarf planet and its moon Charon.
“New Horizons is in good condition, silently crossing into the depths of space to more than four billion miles from Earth, but it’s time to wake up and get to work. .. “recently explained Alice Bowman, head of mission in Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.
Since its launch in January 2006, New Horizons has hibernated 1873 days, or two-thirds his journey of nine. This standby preserves electronic components, electrical circuits and the onboard systems. This also allows NASA to reduce the operating costs of the mission.
New Horizons had to go to sleep a total of 18 times since the beginning of its flight. The longest of these sleep periods lasted 202 days. Last hibernation lasted only 99 days.
A flight computer is a regular assessment of the state of its operation and sends a weekly message to Earth, which puts more than four hours to reach destination .
The rare times when the probe was “awake” since his departure was devoted to setting the meter and to do some research
-. Geological data –
New Horizons will begin its exploration activities on January 15 to study Pluto at a distance of 260 million kilometers. It will pass closer to Pluto about July 14, 2015.
Despite the low brightness on the surface of the dwarf planet and its moon, New Horizons should collect data on the geology of the two stars and establish topography.
The ship carries on board seven instruments including spectrometers infrared images and ultraviolet, two cameras with a high-resolution telescope, two powerful particle spectrometers and space dust detector.
New Horizons depends for its power of one thermoelectric generator and operates with less electricity than two 100-watt bulbs.
The atmosphere surrounding Pluto, discovered in 1988, makes impossible to put in orbit around the dwarf planet, forcing the probe to a remote observation.
Once the probe has completed its observer mission Pluto and its moon Charon, it could continue his journey to get closer to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of debris surrounding the solar system left at the time of his birth there is 4.6 billion years.
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientific team responsible for the New Horizons Mission has identified three potentially interesting objects in this area that the probe could go scanned. With a diameter of 25 to 55 km, they are about 1.5 billion miles from Pluto.
2300 km in diameter, Pluto is smaller than our Moon and mass 500 times lower than that of the Earth.
five moons Pluto and orbits the Sun in 247.7 years.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union withdrew Pluto status planet given its small size which now apparent to the category of dwarf planets.
Our solar system no longer only eight planets.
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