Preview

New Horizon Mission Design Essay

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
11189 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
New Horizon Mission Design Essay
New Horizons Mission Design
YANPING GUO and ROBERT W. FARQUHAR
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins
Road, Laurel, MD 20723-6099, U.S.A.
(e-mail: yanping.guo@jhuapl.edu, robert.farquhar@jhuapl.edu)

Abstract
The mission design for the New Horizons mission went through more than five years of numerous revisions and updates before its launch on January 19, 2006. For the baseline mission design, the New Horizon spacecraft is expected to fly by Jupiter on February 28, 2007 to gain a needed speed boost and encounter Pluto on July 14, 2015 after a 9.5-year journey from launch, followed by extended mission to Kuiper Belt objects. In order to meet the New Horizons mission design objectives, requirements and
…show more content…

Charon does not move around Pluto; instead, Pluto and Charon
3

move around the center of mass of the Pluto system, the Pluto barycenter. The
PKB mission is to carry out the first scientific reconnaissance of the Pluto system and accomplish the specified science objectives and goals through a close flyby of
Pluto and Charon.

The outer space beyond the orbit of Neptune is referred as the Kuiper Belt. It was named after Gerald Kuiper, who predicted in 1951, as a hypothesis, that the shortperiod comets originate from a collection of material left over from the formation of the solar system. Kuiper’s theory was proved with the discovery of the first
Kuiper belt object by David Jewitt and Jane Luu (Jewitt and Luu, 1993) in 1992.
Since then, numerous Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have been discovered each year. So far, the number of KBOs identified is over 1000, which is believed to be only a very small fraction of the total number of KBOs. For the first time, the
PKB mission aims to explore the Kuiper Belt region by visiting one or more
KBOs in an extended mission following the Pluto-Charon encounter. The KBO encounter is a highly desired mission goal, not one of the NASA AO’s mission


You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    INT1 Task 1

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Our Solar System INT1 TASK 1 The Evolution of our Solar System • Observations of the stars, sun, and planets appearing to revolve around the Earth, which seem to be at motionless, lead ancient astronomers to believe the Earth was the center of the solar system. • Claudis Ptolemy’s version of the Geocentric Model was the most widely accepted and recognized example of the Geocentric Model. • Nicolaus Copernicus published a book on his theory of a heliocentric system, the book, De revolutionibus orbium coelstium, puts the Sun at the center of the Solar System with planets revolving around it. It also pointed out that the Earth was in motion and that motion could explain the Retrograde motion of the planets.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    INT1 Task 1

    • 685 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Part 1: The Solar System, How Our Understanding Has Changed Part One Geocentric Vs. Heliocentric Circa 150 A.D. Hipparchus created principals were founded stating that the earth was the center of the universe (Jones, A.R., n.d.).…

    • 685 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    GMCS Project

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages

    An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that does not orbit the Sun and instead orbits a different star…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    astro quiz

    • 682 Words
    • 4 Pages

    According to our present theory of solar system formation, which of the following objects now reside quite far from the place where they formed originally?…

    • 682 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lesson 1 Lab

    • 1279 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In January 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons probe on a mission to fly by Pluto. New Horizons is one of the fastest man-made objects ever launched, and is not scheduled to arrive at Pluto until July 2015. As of today, it takes about 9.5 years to travel from the Earth to Pluto. The distance from Earth to Pluto is not constant, but averages to 3.57 billion miles. The Space Shuttle orbits at 17,500 miles per hour. Therefore 205,000 hours or 8,500 days or 23 years 105 days.…

    • 1279 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    These results brought the grand total to more than 1.5 billion pounds since the drive began in…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He added that Pluto is much more active than anyone hope for. Pluto stands to reason that the other bodies are at least analogous because they are running on their own power, according to National…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    New Horizons Research Paper

    • 3500 Words
    • 14 Pages

    New Horizons is a NASA New Frontiers mission managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Launched on January 19, 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft is due to pass Jupiter on February 28, 2007, en route to photographing and examining Pluto and other objects in the Kuiper Belt. Currently traveling at over 51,000 miles per hour, New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched. Yet, it will require eight more years to reach planet Pluto, which will…

    • 3500 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Kepler Mission

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages

    What is the Kepler mission? Many people don’t even know what is going on here on earth let alone in space. The Kepler mission is searching the skies for planets that are the same size as earth and worlds that could possibly similar to our own (Site 1). The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extra solar planets and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft 's observations. This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened. This is amazing; just imagine if there is that many other planets like earth with human life on it. The Kepler team has found so many candidates, they are sharing. They will keep the top 400 candidates to verify and confirm with observations using other telescopes with observations done by Kepler team members (Site 2). Us as human being can only think and wonder if there is life outside of this planet. The Kepler mission is our chance to find out.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cause: The problem with the foam detaching from the fuel tank during launch had already happened on previous occasions, as well as with the foam had striking the shuttle. Solutions to the problem had been proposed over the years but none had been implemented. Although NASA engineers initially identified foam strikes as a majority safety concern for the shuttle after many launches with no safety problems due to the foam, NASA management became complacent and overlooked the potential for the foam to cause major problems.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Space Age Research Paper

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages

    February 2013, asteroid 2012 DA14 is plummeting towards Earth. My science class at Crestwood Junior High was chatting about this amazing phenomenon. Most of the class is just counting down the minutes until the bell rings. But I had just started my journey through the unknown, that is still going on today. Wanting to learn all I can about spacecrafts, planets, asteroids, and the many other things around us. From some of the first spacecrafts, all the way to cool technologies that never came to be. Just like the Dyna-Soar spaceplane that was canceled just before building started. This space age style journey has been going on for more than three years. Over just three short space filled years, I have accumulated two telescopes,…

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For my whole life I have been taught that there were exactly 9 planets in the solar system. I had learnt this at a very young age and the number 9 had often been stressed to me. I can't believe the amount of tests that I had failed on the subject because I had failed to remember one of these planets. My excuse had always been, "No! That's not a planet!". If I had forgotten Saturn then I would say, " Oh sir! Saturn's not really a planet, it's yellow and everyone knows that anything yellow is worthless." or if it was Mars, " But sir! Mars is made out of chocolate, how can it be a planet!". But the planet I forgot the most was, Pluto. That little spec floating of into the distance of my galaxy map had always eluded me. I wanted to get rid of it. It had…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plans for the phase 2 extension were initiated in July 2007. The project was expected to come on stream in 2011. It has been, however, delayed for about five years. Upgrades to the three existing platforms and design of the new platforms were undertaken by Aibel.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    KABOOM

    • 2231 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Tidal locking results in the Moon rotating about its axis in about the same time it takes to orbit the Earth. Except forlibration effects, this results in the Moon keeping the same face turned towards the Earth, as seen in the figure on the left. (The Moon is shown in polar view, and is not drawn to scale.) If the Moon were not spinning at all, it would alternately show its near and far sides to the Earth while moving around our planet in orbit, as shown in the figure on the right.…

    • 2231 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Winning Edge

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The month of june witnessed the visits from NE1 to the ESA department. Mr.Diedrich Mentgen, Mr.Alexander Springer visited the ESA department from 18th to 21st of June. Mr. Norman Brosig, Ms.AnneHelene Kindsvater, Mr. Denis Ludwig, Mr. Stephan Poeppel visited ESA department from 18th to 27th of June. The main activities in the visits were to have: Mangement reviews on Business and Cooperation, AB12 SW Workshops for EDR, COMM and DIAG, Team Building, EDR Task force Closure meeting and 8D reviews.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays