Probe sets off to explore Pluto
Artists impression of the New Horizons spacecraft arriving at Pluto in 2015. © NASA
The first mission to the outermost planet Pluto launched successfully at 2 pm on the 20th January from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The NASA New Horizons space probe (shown above) is roughly the size of a piano and weighs in at close to 500 kg. The craft is currently speeding away from Earth at approximately 36,000 miles per hour on a trajectory that will take it more than 3 billion miles toward its primary target.
New Horizons will undergo a gravitational sling-shot past Jupiter in February 2007 and the resulting acceleration will allow it to start the first close-up, in-depth study of Pluto and its moon (Charon) in the summer of 2015. As part of a possible extended mission, the spacecraft would then examine one or more additional objects in the Kuiper Belt - a region of ancient, icy, rocky bodies (including Pluto) far beyond Neptune's orbit.
After the Jupiter encounter, during which the probe's instruments will be trained on the planet and its moons, New Horizons will be put into electronic hibernation for much of the journey to Pluto. Operators will turn off all but the most critical electronic systems and check in with the spacecraft once a year to make sure all is well and perform course corrections, if necessary.
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