New Horizons
On Tuesday NASA will launch its Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission. After a successful return of the StarDust spacecraft, I'm sure morale is very high for this launch. Pluto has never received its own space probe and there remains a considerable aura of mystique around the planet (or Kuiper-object, if you prefer). The trip will take nine years (Pluto is 4.4-7.3 billion km away, depending on its orbit). In February 2007 it will get a gravity assist from Jupiter and then cruise straight on towards Pluto and Pluto's moon Charon. Why visit Pluto, you might ask? Our Solar System has three zones: the inner rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars); the middle gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune); and then some icy rocks in the farthest reaches before you get to the Kuiper Belt. Not much is known about these "Icy dwarfs"; New Horizon's will help scientists figure out where Pluto, Charon and other Kuiper objects fit in with the rest of our solar system. In particular, the scientific objectives are:
- Map surface composition of Pluto and Charon
- Characterize geology and morphology ("the look") of Pluto and Charon
- Characterize the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate
- Search for an atmosphere around Charon
- Map surface temperatures on Pluto and Charon
- Search for rings and additional satellites around Pluto
- PLUS... conduct similar investigations of one or more Kuiper Belt Object
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5 comments:
is pluto the planet that some astronomers say isn't a planet because is has an eliptical orbit instead of a circular orbit like the "real" planets? think they will find evidence of water and life out in the nether reaches of the solar system?
The controversy surrounding Pluto has to do more with its size. Pluto has more in common with other Kuiper Belt objects than the other 8 planets. Its been a planet so long, some astronomers don't see any need to reclassify it. There's water associated with comets out there. As to life? We know that some important amino acids and organic molecules are out there so I suppose anything is possible. I would have to guess that anything would be bacteria-like, however.
waste of money if you were to ask me, but i'm not on nasa's consulting list. unless they find pluto is made up 100% of uranium that will give us greedy earthlings an unlimited supply of energy when we find a way to bring it back to the little blue dot.
further to my last comment with respect to this mission being a waste of money; in an npr interview, a nasa spokesperson when asked how nasa justifies the expense, said nothing about the scientific reasons, she only said it wasn't a lot of money. to paraphrase her, americans will spend more on the national geographic and newsweek magazines to see the pictures of pluto than the mission cost. now that is one hell of a justification for spending $700 million. and just maybe she used that reasoning because she couldn't think/hadn't thought of a valid scientific reason for spending that much money to take a close up picture of a piece of frozen rock.
NASA actually has a strict and rigorous process to determine its main scientific goals (which were mentioned in the post). Both NASA and the National Academy of Sciences made the exploration of the outer Solar System and beyond a priority. New Horizons accomplishes many of their goals. See here for an overview: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/whyGo.html
She wasn't a very good PR person if she couldn't answer that question.
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