{"id":5035,"date":"2015-07-06T08:04:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T08:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=5035"},"modified":"2015-07-06T08:04:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T08:04:44","slug":"nasas-new-horizons-spacecraft-stays-the-course-to-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/nasas-new-horizons-spacecraft-stays-the-course-to-pluto\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New Horizons Spacecraft Stays the Course to Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"These<\/a>
The known small moons, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx, are visible as adjacent bright and dark pairs of dots, due to their motion in the 105 minutes between the two image sets.
Credits: NASA\/JHU-APL\/SwRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft is getting a final \u201call clear\u201d as it speeds closer to its historic July 14 flyby of Pluto and the dwarf planet\u2019s five moons.<\/span><\/p>\n

After seven weeks of detailed searches for dust clouds, rings, and other potential hazards, the New Horizons team has decided the spacecraft will remain on its original path through the Pluto system instead of making a late course correction to detour around any hazards. Because New Horizons is traveling at 30,800 mph (49,600\u00a0kph), a particle as small as a grain of rice could be lethal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re breathing a collective sigh of relief knowing that the way appears to be clear,\u201d said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA. \u201cThe science payoff will be richer as we gather data from the optimal flight path, as opposed to having to conduct observations from one of the back-up trajectories.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mission scientists have been using the spacecraft\u2019s most powerful telescopic camera, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), to look for potential hazards, such as small moons, rings, or dust, since mid-May. The decision on whether to keep the spacecraft on its original course or adopt a Safe Haven by Other Trajectory, or “SHBOT” path, had to be made this week since the last opportunity to maneuver New Horizons onto an alternate trajectory is July 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot finding new moons or rings present is a bit of a scientific surprise to most of us,\u201d said principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. \u201cBut as a result, no engine burn is needed to steer clear of potential hazards. We presented these data to NASA for review and received approval to proceed on course and plan. We are \u2018go\u2019 for the best of our planned Pluto encounter trajectories.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

New Horizons formed a hazard analysis team in 2011, after the discovery of Pluto\u2019s fourth moon, Kerberos, raised concerns the cratering of these moons by small debris from the outer area of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt, could spread additional hazardous debris into New Horizons\u2019 path. Mission engineers re-tested spare spacecraft blanketing and parts back on Earth to determine how well they would stand up to particle impacts, and scientists modeled the likely formation and locations of rings and debris in the Pluto system. By the time New Horizons\u2019 cameras were close enough to Pluto to start the search last month, the team had already estimated the chances of a catastrophic incident at far less than one percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The images used in the latest searches that cleared the mission to stay on its current course were taken June 22, 23 and 26. Pluto and all five of its known moons are visible in the images, but scientists saw no rings, new moons, or hazards of any kind. The hazards team determined that satellites as faint as about 15 times dimmer than Pluto\u2019s faintest known moon, Styx, would have been seen if they existed beyond the orbit of Pluto\u2019s largest and closest moon, Charon.<\/span><\/p>\n

If any rings do exist, the hazard team determined they must be extremely faint, reflecting less than one 5-millionth of the incoming sunlight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe suspense \u2013 at least most of it \u2013 is behind us,\u201d says John Spencer, of SwRI, who leads the New Horizons hazard analysis team. \u201cAs a scientist I\u2019m a bit disappointed that we didn\u2019t spot additional moons to study, but as a New Horizons team member I am much more relieved that we didn\u2019t find something that could harm the spacecraft. New Horizons already has six amazing objects to analyze in this incredible system.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft is getting a final \u201call clear\u201d as it speeds closer to its historic July 14 flyby of Pluto and the dwarf planet\u2019s five moons. After seven weeks of detailed searches for dust clouds, rings, and other potential hazards, the New Horizons team has decided the spacecraft will remain on its original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",985,398,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143-300x121.jpg",300,121,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",750,303,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",750,303,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",985,398,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",985,398,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",985,398,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",870,352,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",600,242,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",600,242,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",760,307,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",550,222,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",95,38,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",640,259,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",96,39,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15-143.jpg",150,61,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}