"NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sets off to explore distant Pluto, the tiny would that challenges everything we know about the solar system."


I think conquering "the 3.3-Billion-Mile road to Pluto" will be a huge accomplishment for human beings and I find it very interesting that the probe will be able to do the fly-by and retain enough fuel to maybe do an extended mission that could include one or more members of the Kuiper belt.


This may also provide us with the information to prove whether we have a tenth planet (Xena - 2003 UB313) orbiting our solar system nine billion miles out, or just a big lump of rock.


The spacecraft will have tiny 30 minute window to photograph the stillborn planet, which will add to our understanding of the early evolution of Earth and the Solar System.


For those who are interested, here is the current location of the New Horizons spacecraft. (Sunday March 6, 2006 - 12:28 PM)





and the flight plan:



Click here for New Horizons Official Website






Landon Caouette - Blk 1/2 Physics 20 Class

Website caouette31.4t.com

*I made a mistake on the date above the current position, its supposed to be March 5, 2006. Please disregard that error.

Website caouette31.4t.com

that actually really interesting because i remember hearing about this mission...except i thought it was just an idea they had but i have some questions... what happens if an alien stops the shuttle?

or lets say a rock hits it?

or is the wrong measurments and it smashes into the planet pluto?!

I would think that before they send out the new horizon they would do a detailed scan of surrounding areas to insure that nothing will interfere with its course.
But what i would be concerned about is when the new horizon is in sleep mode, i read that it will be in sleep mode for nearly a decade once it passes Jupitor and heads for Pluto. Thats an very long time for a computer to remain in sleep mode. What are the chances that during that decade something unsuspecting can happen to the computer during such a long period of time?

Its a good question. The voyager 1 and 2 probes are way past our solar system (being launched in the 70s/80s) and they still respond to us.

Twenty-five years ago, on November 12, 1980 at 3:56 PM PST, the Voyager 1 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn in mankind's first detailed reconnaissance of that giant planet.

I think if they could do it then, they can easily do it now.

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

what if a rock hits it hahaha.. now theres a good question! i wonder what kind of technologies the space ship has in place to recover or prevent that from happening. cuz im sure they didnt just go hmm lets send it up and see what happens

haha that would be a pretty cool thing to see... seeing as it would be going at 13 miles per second...

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

but considering all of the junk up in space what are the odds that this tiny aircraft wouldn't get hit by something. Looking at the picture of it in the magazine it looks as if it were built out of gold tin foil and if it is going that fast and it happens to come into contact with space junk that would cause a pretty big problem.

yes it is very ugly crystal...thats why we can rule out aliens taking it...HAHAHA buuuuut what is this sleep mode....why do they have to do that to the computer...i mean if its already going for so many years why shut her down? and especially so close to pluto........ wasnt that the target?

Computers require energy to run and anything could happen, like a short circuit and what not. Simply putting it into sleep mode minimizes the effects and the probability of anything happening to the aircraft computers. When messing around with that much cash, id imagine they'd cover all their bases.

well then i guess they have to hope that it will turn back on right...but ok so how long is it going to take to get there.... 10 years plus right?

they hope by ~2015

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

2015!! I'll be an old lady by then Hopefully in the next...9 years scientists will develop better technology so that in the future we won't have to wait so long for the next spacecraft to travel long distances.

I found this for anyone whos interested.




March 9, 2006
New Horizons Adjusts Course Toward Jupiter

With a 76-second burst from its thrusters today, New Horizons cleaned up the last of the small trajectory "dispersions" from launch and set its course toward next February's gravity-assist flyby of Jupiter.

Changing the spacecraft's velocity by about 1.16 meters per second, the maneuver was the smallest of the three New Horizons has carried out since launch on Jan. 19, and the first conducted with the spacecraft in three-axis pointing mode. It also aimed New Horizons toward the Pluto "keyhole" at Jupiter - the precise point where the giant planet's gravity helps swing the spacecraft toward the close flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015.

When the maneuver started at noon EST, New Horizons was about 51.7 million kilometers (32.1 million miles) from Earth, moving along its trajectory at 37.5 kilometers (23.3 miles) per second. Mission operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., monitored spacecraft status through NASA's Deep Space Network antenna station near Canberra, Australia.
-NASA.gov

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

chances are we are going to develope many many space inventions by then.. well probably be able to visit like pluto for a vacation ( dont know why somebody would like to go there but eh whatever floats your boat)

i hope that sometime in the near future (preferably while im still alive)that space travel becomes easier and more common so that people other than astronauts and billionairs can go up. how amazing would it be to go visit the moon for a field trip (eek just think about all the permission slips :P) or for a winter vacation.

Spring break on the moon. Ill see you all there in 2050!!!

dude i'll be so old by then. like uhh.... 62 or something!

old people can still party it up lol...but if it does start getting easier to travel to outter space its not always going to be good....

if you think about it that means that lets say a killer, can kill someone here and then go into space and never be caught...now thats pretty scary stuff...so i think that if we do start travelling easier into space there will be a lot more violence.

Theres violence everywhere.. this will just give us more of a variety of ways to kill someone muhahaha ... think of star wars.. an intergalactic policing system.. god i love that stuff haha... **** when im old i hope we arent dissapointed like our parents were. They pretty much got owned haha. They predicted so many crazy things, but none of it happend.

sure we'll be old but hey we'll WEIGH less on the moon..we'll still have the same mass but eh who cares? imagine..drinking on the moon..it wouldnt go over very well..plue we would have to have built a kind of convservatory up there so we can all be inside instead of at risk where we can "fly" off into outer outer space

I think this space exploration will allow us to find out more about our solar system and the universe that we are in. When we get the information back we will be able to tell for sure if Pluto is an actual plaint or not. And also if there really is a so called plaint “X”.

(It's still under question whether they are going to be classified planets or not but here they are)
They found 2 planets beyond Pluto, the first is called Xena, they say it's about 1.5 times the size of Pluto, it is around between 2,600km and 3,000km across, and inhabits a region three times as far from the sun as does Pluto, averaging a distance of nine billion miles from our star. A single orbit takes the world 560 earth-years.

And on March 15, 2004, NASA released info about a planetoid called Sedna. It's between 800 miles and 1,100 miles in diameter, or about three-quarters the size of Pluto.

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

Who does NASA find these planets? and why know why didnt they find them 5 years ago. And if they can see these planets why cant they see other planets further away.

the planets are so far away and so small that if you stood on the planet, you could block out the sun completely with a needle head. it's part of the reason they couldn't see them until bigger and better telescopes were built

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com

Technology keeps getting more and more advanced. I am curious to see exactly what scientists especially people at NASA will try to do. But more importantly, what they are successful in.

Yes the reason why we can see those maybe plaints now and we could not see them before is because of our advances in technology. And I believe that in the future that we will for sure find out if those things out there are really plaints or just really big rocks. And who knows there might even be life on Pluto who really know till we get there.

The issue of planets beyond Pluto is not one of confirming them. We know the "rocks" are out there. It's a question of definition. What exactly is a "planet". Before you say "anything orbiting the sun", consider this...
(1) asteroids orbit the sun, are they planets?
(2)comets orbit the sun, are they planets?
etc etc etc....

well if i had to create a definition for a planet it would be; a hunk of rock or ball gas of at least ____(enter number here)______km in diameter that orbits primarily the sun (so you don't have any moons being considered as planets)

that is one of the things that we are trying to find out with this mission to Pluto. Scientists are trying to figure out what those numbers are that u mentioned. And once they figure that out we will be able to classify if Pluto is a planet or just a rock and same thing goes for the other 2 rocks past Pluto.

How would they do that...measure the diameter of Pluto? Wouldn't that be hard...haha I don't think that they would have to walk the whole length of Pluto and measure it. But how else would they be able to do it?

Go to http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/

Website http://www.caouette31.4t.com