For a long time, much of what we knew about space and the seemingly endless universe was limited to the images of our telescopes on Earth. In 2006, we embarked on a mission to change this. Johns Hopkins University built an interplanetary space probe called “New Horizons“. This probe was launched at 36,000 mph headed for Pluto. After nine years, the probe arrived, and so in 2015, we received some of the best images of Pluto to date.
NASA states the general goals of the New Horizons probe as to “understand the formation of the Pluto system, the Kuiper belt, and the transformation of the early Solar System.” Scientists have analyzed the data received from the space probe to learn new things about Pluto’s surface and atmosphere. We gained specific insights into the density and composition of Pluto’s atmosphere. Furthermore, we now have more precise estimates of Pluto’s mass and mass distribution.
Not only did we receive important information once New Horizons made it to its destination, but we also got significant pieces of data along the way. The spacecraft had an encounter with an asteroid and later passed by the gas giant Jupiter in 2007. Its closest encounter with Jupiter was at 1.4 million miles away. Not only did the probe send us information about the atmosphere, moons, and magnetosphere of Jupiter, but it also received a gravity assist as it passed near the giant planet. This essentially means that scientists took advantage of Jupiter’s gravity to increase the speed of New Horizons as it traveled on the long path toward Pluto.
Things got more quiet after the encounter with Jupiter. Scientists essentially put the space probe in hibernation in order to preserve the onboard systems until they needed to be activated. New Horizons was brought back online at the end of 2014 because scientists wanted to prepare for the flyby of Pluto. Very soon after this, at the beginning of 2015, the space probe began its approach to the dwarf planet. On July 14, 2015, New Horizons flew a mere 7,800 miles above the surface of Pluto, making it the first spacecraft to ever explore this dwarf planet that stands at 4.7 billion miles away from Earth. The space probe spent a few months exploring Pluto and sending data back to Earth, and after sending the last Pluto data on October 25, New Horizons continued on its way to the outer solar system and beyond.
Now that its primary mission has been accomplished, New Horizons shall embark on its secondary mission, which is to study objects in the Kuiper belt. This will be its task for the following decade. Currently, it is heading toward one specific object in the Kuiper belt that it is expected to reach on New Year’s Day of 2019. Once the space probe reaches this object, it will be 43.4 AU from the Sun, which is 43.4 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The New Horizons space probe is key to learning more about far-away objects, and while it has incurred a financial cost, the benefits to science are invaluable!
