Where is the satellite now new horizons. Interplanetary station New Horizons. Dossier. Meeting of the New Horizons mission with Pluto

Project description

Project New Horizons is a NASA mission to study Pluto and its moons using the AMS, launched on January 19, 2006. The mission is part of the New Frontiers program. To obtain additional acceleration of the apparatus, a gravitational maneuver was used in the gravitational field of Jupiter in 2007 and Pluto - in 2015. Unfortunately, access to Pluto's orbit was not provided. by that time the AMS had picked up too much speed. After a flyby near Pluto, AMS continued its journey in the Kuiper belt. Work New Horizons stations designed for 15 - 17 years.

Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by American Clyde Tombaugh at an observatory in Flagstaff. Until 2006, it was considered the ninth planet solar system until the International Astronomical Union "downgraded" it to a dwarf planet. The reason for this was a number of discoveries of Kuiper belt objects, which are almost not inferior, if not exceeding it in mass.

Neighborhood Earth station New Horizons left with the highest speed among all previously existing spacecraft, when the engines were turned off, it was 16.26 kilometers per second relative to the Earth. The heliocentric speed was 45 kilometers per second, which would have made it possible not to perform a gravitational maneuver near Jupiter. But by 2015, the heliocentric velocity of the spacecraft had fallen to 14.5 kilometers per second, while the speed of Voyager 1, which successfully overcame the gravity of the Sun, is 17.012 kilometers per second (to acquire such a greater speed, the apparatus made an additional gravitational maneuver near Saturn).

Goals New Horizons missions

The main objective of the mission is to investigate the formation Pluto and Charon systems, Kuiper belts, processes that accompanied the early evolution of the solar system. Space station "New Horizons" should study the surface and atmosphere of objects in Pluto system. The extended mission includes similar studies of some Kuiper belt objects.

Mission objectives include:

Surface mapping of Pluto and Charon
Study of the geology and morphology of Pluto and Charon
Study of the atmosphere of Pluto and its scattering into the surrounding space
Finding Atmosphere at Charon
Mapping the Surface Temperatures of Pluto and Charon
Search for rings and new moons of Pluto
Exploring Kuiper Belt Objects

Device device New Horizons

1 - RTG, 2 - narrow beam antenna, 3 - wide beam antenna, 4 - omnidirectional antenna, 5 - correction motors, 6 - star trackers, A - Alice, R - Ralph, L - LORRI, S - SWAP, P - PEPSSI, X - REX, D - VB-SDC.

1 - RITEG, 2 - blinds of the supply system thermal regime, 3 - correction engines, 4 - omnidirectional antenna, 5 - star sensors, A - Alice, R - Ralph, L - LORRI, S - SWAP, P - PEPSSI, X - REX, D - VB-SDC.

The mass of the apparatus is 478 kg, including 77 kg of fuel. Dimensions - 2.2 × 2.7 × 3.2 meters.

The launch was carried out using an American Atlas-5 launch vehicle in the 551 configuration using Russian engine RD-180, the heaviest version of this missile used in 2012, since significant acceleration of the vehicle was required.

Telemetry and control

For communication, the AMC uses 4 X-band antennas: a narrow-beam with high gain, a wide-beam with a medium gain and two omnidirectional antennas. On Earth, deep-space communication antennas with a diameter of 70 meters and already used in projects beyond the orbit of Jupiter are used for data exchange. Omnidirectional antennas were used only in the early stages of AWS flight in near-Earth space and to assist in an emergency (for example, in case of loss of orientation).

When controlling the transmitter, doubling the data rate to Earth is allowed, this method of transmission was successfully tested at the beginning of the mission and is now considered a working option.

When designing a communication system, most of the important nodes were duplicated so that in the event of a failure of the main device, its functions were taken over by the spare. In the vicinity of Jupiter, the system sent data to Earth at a rate of 38 kilobits per second (4.75 kb / s), this speed is comparable to the speed of an outdated dial-up modem. The device transmits information about the Pluto system at a speed of 768 bits per second (96 bytes per second); It takes about three hours to transfer one megabyte. Although this speed is extremely small, it allows you to send invaluable scientific data and even high-quality photographs to Earth. In addition to low speed, the complexity of working with the communication system lies in the signal delay, which is four and a half hours in each direction.

The received data will initially be stored in the drives of the on-board computer. This is partly due to the high rate of information received, which significantly exceeds the transmission capacity of the transmitter, and also to the fact that, in order to reduce the mass of the station, the equipment is mounted directly on the AMS case and its targeting requires rotation of the entire apparatus.

Energy supply

The source of electricity is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). At the beginning of the mission, its power was 250 watts, every four years it decreases by 5 percent, which provides a power of 200 watts during the main stage of the mission - a flyby in the Pluto system. This is significantly inferior to the power of the RTGs installed on the Voyagers (470 watts at launch, 290 watts as of 2006). This explains the shorter duration of the project, which should be completed in the 2020s, when the AWS will fly a distance of 50 to 55 astronomical units.

The basis of the power supply system was the GPHS-RTG RTG model already tested in other missions (Ulysses, Galileo, ). The generator contains about 11 kilograms of fuel in the form of 72 capsules of plutonium-238 oxide. Each capsule is housed in an iridium power case, over which is a graphite shell.

This isotope is characterized by high heat release per unit mass, as well as radioactive decay, which takes place with the emission of only alpha particles, which allows the use of only light radiation shielding. This isotope can only be obtained from the production of weapons-grade plutonium, but this work has been stopped both in the United States and in Russia, and this makes it extremely scarce and expensive.

Funding problems and delays in production resulted in the generator being underpowered than originally planned, leading to a revision of the research program. The mass of plutonium in the NewHorizons RTG is about three times less than it was in the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Computing complex of the station

The AMS computing complex is represented by two systems - a command and data processing system and a navigation and control system. Each of them is duplicated; in total, the computing complex consists of four computers. At the heart of each is a processor Mongoose-V(radiation-resistant version of the R3000 processor) with MIPS architecture, operating at a frequency of 12 megahertz. Compared to the RAD750 processor used in the mission, it is less productive and operates at a lower frequency (12 vs. 200 megahertz), but its cost is much less. To save the received information, two banks of flash memory (main and spare) with a volume of 8 gigabytes each are used.

Computer boards are located in special modules in which the required temperature is maintained; also there are electronic components of instruments and controls.

On March 19, 2007, as a result of a failure, the computer rebooted and switched to protected mode. It took two days to fully restore functionality, but some of the collected data on Jupiter's magnetosphere was lost. This incident did not affect the main mission of AMS.

Orientation and stabilization

Since the onboard power source of the AMS does not have the necessary power for stabilization by means of flywheels, the orientation and stabilization of the vehicle is carried out only by the corrective propulsion system, which is fueled by methylhydrazine. The fuel tank of the New Horizons holds up to 90 kilograms of methylhydrazine, but only 77 kilograms were loaded, which is enough to give the device an additional speed of 290 meters per second.

AMS New Horizons took this picture of Europa after closest approach to Jupiter

1Jupiter and its moon Io. The picture was taken by AMC New Horizons in early 2007.

Combined image of the northern lights on Jupiter, taken by New Horizons and the space-based Chandra X-ray observatory

Image of the Minor Red Spot in Jupiter's atmosphere, compiled from images from the Hubble Space Telescope and AMS New Horizons

Ensuring the thermal regime

The temperature inside the AMC ranges from 10 to 30 °C. At the beginning of the flight, on the side of the apparatus facing the Sun, although the temperature left this corridor, it was not higher than 40 °C. The minimum allowable temperature is 0 °C, due to the freezing point of hydrazine.

The temperature regime depends on the balance of power supply, heat released by the RTG, heat release through the thermal insulation and external elements of the station.

To maintain the temperature regime, the device is wrapped in light multi-layer thermal insulation that retains the heat generated by the working electronics.

Instruments installed on AMS

AMS "New Horizons" is equipped with the following devices:

Alice ultraviolet spectrometer to study the composition of the atmosphere and surface structure of Pluto. It was developed at the Southwestern Research Institute. The same instrument was built for the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft;
survey camera Ralph, operating in the visible and infrared ranges;
LORRI (Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager) camera with a resolution of 5 microradians, capable of capturing detailed and long-range images. The camera was designed at APL;
solar wind particle meter SWAP (Solar Wind Analyzer for Pluto) developed at the Southwestern Research Institute. It will help determine whether Pluto has a magnetosphere, as well as determine the rate at which it is losing its atmosphere;
Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) energy particle spectrometer. The task of the device is to search for neutral atoms leaving Pluto's atmosphere and receiving a charge from the solar wind;
dust detector VB-SDC (Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter) to determine the concentration of dust particles in the Kuiper belt;
radio spectrometer REX (Eng. Radio EXperiment), integrated with the main antenna of the AMS. Its task is to study the structure of Pluto's atmosphere, the thermal properties of its surface, and to measure the masses of Pluto, Charon, and some Kuiper belt objects).

> New Horizons Mission to Pluto

Mission New Horizons– spacecraft flight to the dwarf planet Pluto: research and first photos, external system, satellite review, Kuiper belt.

Now you will not surprise anyone by sending a probe to another planet in the solar system, because there is a whole army of them on Mars. But before, they rarely took risks with launching over long distances. Voyager 2 reached the maximum distance, which visited the outer planets in 1989, and is now heading into interstellar space.

Another breakthrough was the New Horizons apparatus. In 2015, he fulfilled his main goal - to visit the dwarf planet Pluto.

Mission Background New Horizons

In the 1980s, scientists sent Voyager 1 to Saturn and began treating the planet as a gravitational slingshot to launch a probe to Pluto in 1986. But they wanted to study the satellites, so the maneuver failed.

The researchers decided to find new version because no one has looked that far before. Especially since the Kuiper belt and its precious objects were waiting there.

In 1989, Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal created the Pluto Underground project, dreaming of going to the planet and looking beyond. In the 1990s they managed to study a lot of trans-Neptunian objects and the site aroused more and more interest.

After the cancellation of the mission in 2000, it was decided to create spaceship New Horizons. The funding dispute dragged on for a couple of years, and by borrowing $650 million, Stern's team promised to repay the debt in 14 years.

Mission New Horizons to Pluto

The original target was Pluto, which was supposed to arrive in 2015. Alan Stern was chosen as the principal investigator. On board, in addition to scientific instruments, they placed the US flag and other earthly symbols, as well as 30 grams of the ashes of Clyde Tomb, who owns the discovery of Pluto.

Mission tools to Pluto

7 devices were installed on the probe:

Alice is a UV spectrometer that analyzes the composition and structure of the atmosphere, and also looks for atmospheric layers around the Charon and Kuiper belts.
LORRI is a telescopic camera that collects information about strikes at long distances.
PEPSSI is an energy particle spectrometer that determines the composition and density of the plasma of the planet's atmosphere.
Ralph is a visual and IR thermal imager/spectrometer that generates color, composition and heat map.
REX - determines the composition and temperature index of the atmosphere.
SDC (created by students) - measures cosmic dust.
SWAP is a spectrometer that determines the atmospheric "ejection" and monitors the contact of Pluto and the stellar wind.

Mission launch to Pluto

Due to weather problems, the device was sent 2 days later than planned (January 19) in 2006. It took off from the Canaveral Air Force and broke away at the fastest speed of 16.5 km/s. It took only 9 hours to reach the lunar orbit. But it did not break the record for Voyager 1, whose speed was 17.145 km/s.

inner solar system

The winter of 2006 was spent analyzing the functionality of the tools. On April 7, he flew by Mars at a speed of 21 km / s. At this moment, the apparatus moved away from the star by 243 million km. In June, he raced past the asteroid 132524 AP at a distance of 101867 km. The Ralph device helped to take pictures and determine the diameter of 2.5 km. You can see Pluto in the bottom photo.

In September, New Horizons photographed a distant dwarf planet for the first time. During this time, he was testing LORRI. The pictures were taken at a distance of 4,200,000,000 km.

outer solar system

The first photos of Jupiter appeared the same in September 2006 at a distance of 291 million km. In January, IR footage of Callisto arrived. In 2007, the mechanism approached 2964860 km to Europe and used the gravity of Jupiter. This helped to accelerate at 4 km / s and reduce the flight time by 3 years.

Jupiter became a dress rehearsal, which helped the device to check all the equipment, communications and memory buffer.

On Jupiter, the most important thing was to track the atmospheric conditions and analyze the structure and components of the cloud cover. It was possible to consider radiation impacts created by thermal energy in the polar regions, as well as powerful storms. For the first time, the Great Red Spot and faint rings were captured close up.

A trip past Jupiter made it possible to study the structure and movement of the gas jets of the moon Io. It turned out to calculate the emissions of the Tvashtar volcano, extending 330 km from the surface. The IR survey showed another 36 volcanic formations.

LEISA analyzed surface layer Callisto, by demonstrating exactly how lighting and viewing conditions affect the IR spectrum data of the surface ice crust.

Having passed Jupiter, the device spent most of the time to Pluto in a state of hibernation. Thus, he raced past Saturn (2008) and Uranus (2011). In 2014, he woke up, and the team activated instrument calibration and route correction. On August 24, he passed Neptune.

Meeting of the New Horizons mission with Pluto

In 2015, we had a long-awaited date with the tiny dwarf Pluto. On January 31, the probe took some photos at a distance of 203,000,000 km, where the planet and Charon were displayed. This was followed by frames of Nikta and Hydra (201,000,000), and after - Kerberos and Styx.

On July 4, the connection was interrupted due to an anomaly in the software and the device went into safe mode. The next day, the glitch was corrected, and the probe continued its rendezvous. The apparatus made its closest passage on July 14. At that moment, scientists took the highest quality and most detailed photographs and collected a huge amount of information.

The probe is now on its way to the Kuiper belt. His task is to study one/two objects lying on the path of the trajectory. Three potential targets have already been selected: PT1, PT2 and PT3. All of them span 30-55 km in diameter and are too tiny to track in telescopic observation. Distant at 43-44 a.u. from the sun. These are frosty objects and diverge significantly in terms of Pluto.

Despite its speed, the spacecraft will never catch up with the Voyagers. But this is not necessary, because there are still many unexplored objects within the system. With its help, it was possible to obtain a huge amount of information about solar planets and look into the most distant places.

The New Horizons probe is the first spacecraft ever built to reach Pluto, and the scientific information it gathered during its flight will eventually rewrite our textbook on this tiny, icy world we know so little about.

The New Horizons mission is unique in many ways and even has a few secrets on board.

Here are 11 curious facts about the incredible mission to Pluto.

The launch of New Horizons was the fastest in history

On January 19, 2006, NASA attached the New Horizons spacecraft to the top of an Atlas-V rocket and launched into space. It was the fastest launch in history, reaching over 58,000 km/h. Just nine hours after launch, the spacecraft had already reached the moon. It took the Apollo astronauts three days to reach it. The New Horizons probe reached her eight times faster.

When the New Horizons probe was launched, Pluto was still a planet

When the probe was launched, scientists were already whispering anxiously about Pluto's status as a planet. That's because the Pluto-sized object Eris was discovered in 2005, and astronomers had to decide whether Eris would become the tenth planet, or whether it would be easier to revise the definition of a planet.

Ultimately, Pluto ceased to be a planet five months after the launch of New Horizons.

Despite the fact that the New Horizons probe was created for Pluto, he also looked at Jupiter

In 2007, New Horizons made an important encounter with Jupiter. The spacecraft needed the powerful gravity of the giant planet, which accelerated the probe like a shot from a slingshot in the direction of Pluto. This flyby was successful and propelled the probe another 14,500 km/h.

The New Horizons probe made the first video of the eruption of an extraterrestrial volcano

One of Jupiter's moons, Io, serves more than four hundred volcanoes, making it the most geologically active and driest object in our solar system. As the New Horizons probe approached Jupiter, it took a series of images of Io that revealed volcanic bursts on the surface.

Together, these images made it possible to create the first video of an erupting volcano outside the Earth.

New Horizons carries ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh

Tombo discovered this dwarf planet in 1930, and 67 years later, dying, he asked to send his ashes into space. NASA placed a handful of his ashes on top of New Horizons before it launched in 2006. His remains "visited" the planet he discovered. However, Tombo's ashes are just one of a number of secrets aboard the New Horizons.

New Horizons probe runs on nuclear fuel

The New Horizons probe flies so far from the Sun that it cannot rely on solar panels to generate power. Instead, his nuclear battery converts the radiation from the decay of plutonium atoms into electricity, thus powering his engine and instruments on board so that he gathers as much information as possible.

Such batteries are in short supply. NASA, for example, has plutonium left for a couple of these. And they are not going to produce yet.

There are seven instruments on board the New Horizons, two of which are named after characters from a television series from the 1950s.

Five of the seven New Horizons instruments are represented by acronyms. Some of them sound familiar like PEPSSI (Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation) and REX (Radio Science Experiment).

Two instruments without acronyms in their names are Ralph and Alice (Ralph and Alice). Ralph will help scientists study the geology and composition of Pluto's surface, while Alice will study Pluto's atmosphere. Ralph and Alice (or Alice) are the two main characters in the 1950s television series Honeymooners.

All New Horizons instruments operate with minimal power consumption, especially the Ralph camera

Although the Ralph camera was built over 10 years ago, it is one of the most ingenious cameras ever made. It weighs about 10 kilograms and requires the same amount of energy to operate as a small table lamp.

This powerful tool can see details of Pluto's surface up to 60 meters across.

A tiny piece of debris could destroy a craft

Now New Horizons is flying through space at a speed of 50,000 km/h. If it gets hit by a piece of ice or dust, the spacecraft will be destroyed before it has a chance to send data back to mission control.

"Even tiny particles the size of a grain of rice can be lethal to New Horizons because we're moving so fast," says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator.

The mission will not end with Pluto

If everything goes well with Pluto, or if New Horizons has enough fuel left, the probe will fly further to study at least one more object in the region of the solar system outside our Kuiper belt planets.

This belt lies at the edge of our solar system and is 20 times wider than the asteroid belt that separates Mars from Jupiter. Astronomers think that it can store the debris of celestial objects left over from the formation of our solar system.

It's been 26 years since we last "first" looked at the planet

The last time this happened was in 1989 when Voyager flew past Neptune. Since then, we have not explored new worlds. The current flyby of Pluto is historical.

TASS-DOSIER /Inna Klimacheva/. On July 14, 2015, for the first time, a spacecraft from Earth flew close to Pluto. The American automatic interplanetary station New Horizons got as close as possible to the dwarf planet at a distance of 12.5 thousand km.

Pluto

This celestial body was discovered on February 18, 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997).

Previously, Pluto was considered a full-fledged ninth planet in the solar system, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Congress declared it a dwarf planet.

Pluto is approximately 5.7 billion km from Earth. Before visiting New Horizons, scientists had only photographs of the dwarf planet taken from near-Earth orbit by the Hubble telescope (Hubble; a joint American-European project). However, these images made it possible to distinguish only the most general surface details.

Project history

Automatic interplanetary station New Horizons (from the English. "New Horizons") was created by order of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA; NASA) at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University; Baltimore, Maryland, USA) ).

The laboratory also provides overall management of the New Horizons mission. The Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, Texas) is responsible for the scientific equipment installed on the spacecraft.

Work on the design of the device began in the late 1990s, and the creation started in 2001. The cost of the project in 2006 was estimated at $650 million.

Characteristics of AMS

The spacecraft has the shape of an irregular prism.
Its dimensions are 2.2 x 2.7 x 3.2 m, the total weight is 478 kg.
The onboard computer complex consists of two systems - command and data processing; navigation and control. Each of them is duplicated, as a result, there are four computers on board the AMS.
The propulsion system includes 14 engines (12 for orientation and two for correction) powered by hydrazine.
Energy is supplied by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) using plutonium-238 dioxide (at launch, there were 11 kg of radioactive fuel on board, which was purchased from Russia).
RITEG power - 240 watts, when approaching Pluto - about 200 watts.
To store scientific information, two banks of flash memory with a total volume of 16 gigabytes are provided - the main and the backup.

scientific equipment

The apparatus is equipped with seven scientific instruments:

ultraviolet camera-spectrometer Alice ("Alice");
survey camera Ralph ("Ralph");
optical telescope-camera LORRI ("Lorri") with a resolution of 5 microradians (a unit of angular resolution in astronomy), designed for detailed and long-range shooting; radio spectrometer REX ("Reks");
particle analyzer SWAP ("Swap");
PEPSSI particle detector (Pepssi);
cosmic dust detector SDC ("SDC").

In addition to scientific equipment, on board the AMS is a capsule with some of the ashes of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, as well as a CD with the names of 434,738 earthlings participating in NASA's "Send Your Name to Pluto" campaign.

Launch and flight

New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006 by an Atlas V launch vehicle ("Atlas-5") from the Cape Canaveral launch site (Florida, USA).

In April 2006, the spacecraft crossed the orbit of Mars, in February 2007 it performed a gravitational maneuver in the vicinity of Jupiter, and in June 2008 it flew past Saturn. In July 2010, he took pictures of Neptune and its satellite Triton, in March 2011 he crossed the orbit of Uranus, in August 2014 - Neptune.

In January-February 2015, New Horizons began observing Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. In early April, approaching the planet at a distance of 113 million km, the automatic station transmitted photographs to Earth. In May, pictures of its satellites - Hydra, Nikta, Kerberos, Styx, were taken, in June - the first color images of Pluto and Charon (despite the low resolution of the images, it was possible to see the difference in the color of the surfaces of celestial bodies, the color scheme of the planet is closer to beige-orange, the satellite - grey).

On July 4, 2015, a computer failure occurred at the automatic interplanetary station and communication with the device was lost. AMS went into safe mode and stopped collecting data. Two days later, on July 6, the automatic station returned to normal operation.

Encounter with Pluto

On July 14, 2015, New Horizons approached Pluto as close as possible - at a distance of 12.5 thousand km. After 14 minutes, the spacecraft was at a minimum distance from Charon - 28.8 thousand km. However, the signal-confirmation of the achievement of the main goal of the journey from him was received by the Earth only the next day - July 15th.

Flying near the dwarf planet, the interplanetary apparatus carried out observations for 9 days. He was the first to obtain detailed color images of Pluto and Charon (published in September 2015), and studied the atmosphere of the dwarf planet.

New satellites of Pluto, in addition to the already known five, could not be detected. All observations were made from a flyby trajectory, due to which only a part of Pluto's surface was photographed in good resolution. New Horizons could not enter the orbit of the dwarf planet because of its high speed - about 14.5 thousand km / s.

It is planned that New Horizons will transmit the collected data until October - December 2016 (signals from it reach the Earth with a delay of 4.5 hours). By July 2016, more than 75% of the data collected by the spacecraft during its flyby near Pluto had already been transmitted.

Mission continuation

After exploring Pluto, New Horizons traveled to other Kuiper belt objects, which includes the dwarf planet. The belt is located 5 billion km from the Sun, beyond the orbit of Neptune, and consists of small celestial bodies. It was named after the American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who in 1950 suggested the existence of small bodies beyond Neptune.

In January 2019, the spacecraft is expected to fly close to another belt object, the small asteroid 2014 MU69, about 45 km in diameter. New Horizons exploration of Kuiper belt objects will continue until 2021.

As of July 13, 2016, the automatic interplanetary station has been in flight for 10 years, 5 months and 25 days.

Expected end of New Horizons - 2026