New Horizons

• Joint project between NASA and John Hopkins
• Launched in 2006
• Cost ~$700 million
• Part of the New Frontiers mission
• Launched by the Atlas V rocket
• Fastest object launched from Earth

Mission

• 5 month long flyby mission of Pluto and Charon
  • Lasted 6 months
• First mission to ever reach Pluto

Probe

• Roughly the same size as a large grand piano
  • ~470 kg
• Powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator
  • Nuclear battery
  • Plutonium-238

Instruments

• LORRI
  • Long Range Reconnaissance Imager
  • Camera
  • Take pictures of Pluto
• SWAP
  • Solar Winds Around Pluto
  • Electrostatic analyzer to measure solar winds
• PEPSSI
  • Pluto Energetic Spectrometer Science Investigation
  • Measured ions and electrons
  • Measure atmospheric decay
• REX
  • Radio Science Experiment
  • Sends radio waves through an objects atmosphere
  • Detect and assess various characteristics of the atmosphere
• Alice
  • Ultraviolet spectrometer
  • Photograph and analyze Pluto's atmosphere
  • Confirmed existence of a hydrogen wall
• Ralph
  • Telescope
  • Two sub-instruments
    • LEISA
    • MVIC
• VBSDC
  • Created by students from the University of Colorado
  • Collect and measure space dust

Mission Results

• Pluto is geologically active
• Pluto might have an ocean in the middle
• Pluto and Charon may have had running water in the past
• Charon may have had an ocean
• Pluto's atmosphere is thin but not deteriorating as fast as originally thought

Space Astronomy Space Mission