The New Horizons spacecraft en route to Pluto, woke up! – 2 Photos
The New Horizons spacecraft en route to Pluto-Charon system and its four moons, was released this weekend its last hibernation, the Eighteenth since his departure, there are more than nine years in January 2006. The probe transmitted a message to NASA to confirm that she was out of her stupor. On board, everything seems to work, although a week is needed to make sure. The instruments on board, seven in number, will gradually be turned on. There are including infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, cameras and a dust detector that has worked during the trip. They will not be too much for us to discover these insufficiently known worlds.
Discovered in 1930, Pluto orbits the Sun in 248 years. It lost its status as a planet in August 2006 when the International Astronomical Union has classified this distant bodies in the category of dwarf planets. Remember, its diameter of 2300 kilometers is smaller than our Moon (3476 km), and the object is about 500 times less massive than the Earth.
New Horizons arrives in regions of the solar system ever visited by a probe. After its flyby of Pluto, it will sink even further to enter the Kuiper Belt. © Nasa
Of course, this disgrace does not diminish the interest of the study. This is the first time a probe will approach a dwarf planet in a region of the solar system ever visited by a probe. In addition, says Hal Weaver, the scientist in charge of the mission, “for decades we thought Pluto was this strange little body to the global periphery. Now we know that it really is a gateway to a whole area of new worlds in the Kuiper Belt, and New Horizons will provide the first big plans for these objects “.
Since its launch, New Horizons has been in hibernation for 1873 days, or about two-thirds of the time of its course. However, two to three times a year, NASA’s out of this mode to ensure the proper operation of all satellite systems, make course corrections or calibrating scientific instruments and acquire data where appropriate .dropoff window Finally, some sequences were used to repeat the meeting activities with Pluto.
Hibernation is putting the probe off. It preserves the components of the satellite and reduces the risk of failure of one of the systems. It also reduces satellite operating costs and frees up the bandwidth of the Deep Space Network NASA strong demand from other missions such as Cassini, Mars probes or Messenger. Only the onboard computer constantly assured monitor the health status of all systems and sent to Earth every week a status report.
Yesterday in the night from Saturday to Sunday, NASA has received confirmation that the probe is out of its hibernation. Today it is around 4.66 billion kilometers from Earth and only 257 million kilometers of Pluto that will fly closer to July 14, 2015 about 11 km / s relative to its target. The remaining distance may seem high, but yet no sensor to date approached so close to Pluto! By then, many appointments are expected, like this one in mid-May when the probe reaches Pluto close enough to observe much better than does the Hubble Space Telescope.
Following this overview, the mission of New Horizons will not be completed. As we explained in a previous article, the probe will sink even further into the outer solar system to one or more objects in the Kuiper Belt located some 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto. These objects are remnants of dwarf planets or planetesimals unfinished, the composition and structure have not changed since the dawn of the solar system, there are 4.56 billion years. Three potential targets were identified and it was in 2016 that NASA will choose to be or will be overflown
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