New Horizon Mission Overview - Essay Example

First & John Smith Semester: Fall Email Address: xxxx@xxxx.com SID xxxxxxx Section (e.g. TR 11 MW12:30, MW3:30 or TR11  HW3 HW4 FINAL Requirements Approved Topic   Cover page   Title: New Horizon Mission Title Abstract   Detailed Outline T.O.C. T.O.C   Proposal (300 words ~1+ pg.) Full paper (2500 words ~10 pg.) Full paper (3000 words ~10 pg.)   References: 5 References: 5 References: 5     Hw3 attached Hw3 attached       Hw4 attached Contents and Organization:       Purpose clearly stated       Logical flow       Contents       Titles and subtitles before sections N/A     Supporting Material       Appropriate refs.       Refs. Cited in text N/A     Language       Spelling       Grammar       Comments     Grade /10 /10 /15 Title: New Horizons Mission Name: John Smith SID: xxxxxxxxx Section: MW12:30, MW3:30 or TR11 Outline 1. Introduction 2. Overview 3. Setting 4. Objectives 5. Instruments 6. Energy Source 7. Help from Jupiter 8. Timeline 9. Supervision 10. Summary 11. References Proposal Pluto is a planet that easily fits wihin the US in view of its small diameter. Nevertheless, the New Horizons Mission is an ambitious project that will investigate and give us useful information about the solar system’s outermost planet – Pluto, the icedwarf – about which our current understanding is very little. It testifies that Pluto continues to interest us though it is no longer a formal part of the solar system as such. It will also study the Pluto-Charon combine, the only known binary planet as alto the Kuiper Belt of rocky object extending beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. The flight, making use of nuclear power, will cover almost five hundred million kilometers in about ten years. On its way, the spacecraft will also be assisted by the gravity of Jupiter as it passes the massive planet. The fact that a radio signal takes only about four hours to traverse the same distance notwithstanding, the Mission’s flight is still among the longest as well as the fastest expeditions mankind has ever known.     This paper is an overview of the New Horizons Mission offering insights into the various facets of the Mission such as the background the Mission, the objectives, the expected data and its presumed value, processes involved in the conversion and analysis of raw data, the records to be maintained, their content and the players involved in the making of these records, the transmission of the data from one level to another, the methods of sorting and arranging data along with its estimated size before it is finally made available to the public and the proposed timeline of events.     The paper throws light on all the stages of the Mission right from pre-flight to the publication of data on the internet. The Mission is as transparent as well as it is philanthropic for there are no narrow motives nor any patents on the information collected. That all the information is free and public is a very distinctive feature of the Mission. The New Horizons Mission 1 Introduction The aim of the NASA’s New Frontiers Program, effective since 2003, is to keep exploring the solar system using spacecrafts. New Horizons is the name given to the first of the New Frontiers missions undertaken by NASA’s Office of Space Science. Though it was launched more than eight years ago, it has not become as popular as it should have. Popular or not, this principal investigator (PI) – led mission to outer planets is indeed very impressive for it seeks to explore and make the first reconnaissance of certain parts of our immediate vicinity of the known universe that have remained unexplored hitherto such as Pluto, a planet smaller than the earth’s moon, its largest moon Charon and the Kupier Belt which together form alsmost the edge of the solar system. The Kuiper Belt, called the Third Zone of the solar system, houses innumerable miniature worlds. To the scientific fraternity, this Third Zone holds as much interest as the asteroid belt does. Added to that, this zone seemed to be losing mass over time the reasons for which remain unclear as of now. None of the earlier spacecraft missions such as Pioneer and Voyager visited this part of the solar system. The current spacecraft, developed at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) measures just 27”x83”x108” and weighs 478 kg and it is this “piano-sized” object which in due course may unveil the mysteries pertaining to the origins of the solar system. Considering that it reaches the moon’s orbit barely in nine hours and passes Jupiter in a little over a year after its launch, it is the fastest spacecraft ever made. 2 Overview It is more than four score years since Pluto was discovered but our understanding of the planet to this day has remained superficial and also kept changing. Whatever we know now has come to be known only in the last four decades and to this day we have not been able to have even a close-up view of this planet. Nor do we know anything about its origin. It is neither a terrestrial planet like the earth nor a gas giant like the Saturn; it is an ice dwarf, typical of the category of objects found in the outer reaches of the solar system. Its most elliptical eccentric orbit, the orbit’s eccentric 170 tilt from the ecliptic plane, its exotic surface, its volatile atmosphere, its conspicuous polar orientation and its ice moons have intrigued astronomers alike before and after it being derecognized as a planet which happened – ironically – shortly after a spacecraft embarked on a voyage to Pluto. It already sailed past Jupiter in the year 2007 and is now within four astronomical units of the target planet. The encounter with Pluto is scheduled for 2015 but it may be delayed by up to five years depending on the trajectory. If its launch was delayed, it would lose the advantage of Jupiter’s gravity which in turn has the capability to significantly reduce the flight time by up to five years. In all, the spacecraft will have travelled 50 astronomical units from the sun. It is interesting to note that, for this voyage, the power consumed by the spacecraft is less than that of a 200 watt light bulb. 2A Setting One of the interesting features about Pluto is its changing position in the solar system. The ‘outermost object’ status alternates between Pluto and Neptune because of their intersecting orbits. It is only a decade-and-a-half ago that the recent switch occurred so Pluto is beyond Neptune again. This will continue for over two centuries henceforth and it will be sometime around the year 2230 that Pluto will be closer to the sun than Neptune. That is to say that Pluto is now moving farther from the sun causing its atmosphere to get frozen. Moreover, Pluto is at its equinox now keeping all its parts open for view and with the passage of time it moves away from the equinox towards the solstice which will last for several decades, the spacecraft endeavor becomes an increasingly futile exercise. The timing of New Horizons is ideally chosen such that the spacecraft’s bold course into the cosmos to Pluto will happen at a time while its atmosphere still leaves scope for study. The more the delay in the current expedition, the less of Pluto will be available for view. For any astronomer with the eagerness to study Pluto, therefore, it is a now-or-never situation. 2B Objectives The history of ice dwarfs is deemed to have connections with the earth’s life system and atmosphere. But in view of the very small size of Pluto and its great distance from the earth, it is not feasible to study it even with the most powerful astronomical telescopes in our possession. The New Horizons Mission will give us data on the temperatures, atmospheric composition, geological structure and surface features of Pluto and its three known moons. The high-priority goal is to characterize the geology, morphology and neutral atmosphere of the binary world. The study of the unique world in the Kuiper Belt and beyond has the potential to give us useful clues that help us speculate on how the solar system came into existence and also to get an idea about the changes that occurred in the period immediately following the solar system. Space scientists are of the conviction that information about the Pluto-Charon region is of fundamental importance in attaining a comprehensive understanding of the solar system. The spacecraft contains all the necessary equipment required for its exhaustive reconnaissance mision which includes surface imaging, producing high-resolution color maps, measuring charged particles, examining surface thermal properties and assessing planet mass. Charon does not show any traces of atmosphere as per the studies from the earth but a closer probe by New Horizons may open new vistas. Observation of the rapidly escaping atmosphere on Pluto may provide answers to our questions on Earth’s primordial atmospheric loss. The mission, it is hoped, will provide insights into the origin and evolution of planet-satellite systems and the impacts that must have been responsible. Instruments The New Horizons spacecraft makes use of seven instruments in delivering its functions namely Alice, a UV imaging spectrometer for studying atmospheric composition and structure, Ralph, a map maker for studying surface geology and morphology, REX (Radio Science Experiment) for measuring atmospheric temperature, atmospheric pressure and density of ionosphere, Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) for producing high-resolution images, Solar Wind at Pluto (SWAP) for studying solar wind interactions and atmospheric escape, Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) for studying the density and composition of energetic particles and plasmas and Student Dust Counter (SDC) for measuring concentration of dust particles in outer solar system. Energy Source In a mission to Pluto, solar energy cannot be a viable alternative for a spacecraft considering the distance from the sun. The New Horizons spacecraft’s supply of electric power comes from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). An RTG uses Plutonium (Pu-238) which is a radioactive element and the heat produced in the process the decay of Plutonium is converted into electric power. Though the energy source is nuclear, there need not be any apprehensions regarding safety since no fission or fusion is involved in the process of producing energy. New Horizons mission also has the distinction of being the first to apply the hibernation mode for a spacecraft. After passing Jupiter, the spacecraft will be hibernation for most part of its voyage up to Pluto during which most of its parts do not use any power at all. Once a year, for the purpose of a checkout and maintenance the hibernation mode is turned off temporarily. Also, the use of RTG as a power source is subject to a safety analysis and approval by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the White Office of Science and Technology (OSTP). Help from Jupiter As the New Horizons spacecraft passes Jupiter, it gets push in the form of Jupiter gravity assist which steeply increases its speed thereby cutting down the travel time to Pluto by up to five years. This, however, would not be possible if the launch took place after February 3, 2006. It is also an opportunity for the spacecraft, as it passes Jupiter, to undertake a mock exercise of what it will later be doing with Pluto. The spacecraft travels at 21 km per second which is 100 times the speed of a jet plane and even at this speed, it would not be able to reach Pluto before 2020 in the absence of Jupiter gravity assist. Timeline The New Horizons spacecraft begins its studies five months before it is about to get closest to Pluto-Charon combine. Two-and-a-half months prior to the closest approach point, we begin to receive images of the binary world which will be of much better resolution than what we so far have. A month before the encounter, daily studies begin and continue as post-encounter studies till a month after the closest approach point. Nine months after the encounter, the entire collection of raw data will be ready for analysis and publication. The nine-month period required for receiving the entire set of data which appears to be rather unduly long is on account of the declining downlink rate. The 38 kbps transmission speed when the spacecraft passes Jupiter becomes as low as 0.6-1.2 kbps as it nears Pluto. The Mission Operation Center at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is responsible for all the mission operations while the Science Operations Center (SOC), Boulder, Colorado is in charge of operation of instruments aboard, processing instrument data and producing data archives. Supervision NASA’s Science Mission Directorate relies on the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) as principal investigator and the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) as the mission’s manager. The team of co-investigators includes NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Colorado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, Lowell Observatory, Stanford University, Washington University, Space Science Institute, Ball Aerospace and George Mason University. Summary In summary, New Horizons is “the first mission to the last planet” with an estimated cost of up to $700 million over a period of fifteen years. It fills a long gap in the study of science because Pluto is the only planet to which a space craft had not been sent before. The Mission is sure to offer new insights into the universe in which we are a small part and also help us go on to solve some of the unsolved mysteries. So we may hope that someday, we will have an International Space Station and we will begin travelling to the moon, Mars and even beyond. References 1. "Boeing Space Systems" Boeing. Internet. 15 Feb. 2000. Available: http://www.boeing.com/ids/a_to_z.html 2. "Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space  Launch Schedules" Space Systems Sunnyvale Operations. Internet. 19 Feb. 2000 Available: http://lmms.exeter.lmo.com/launch/index.htlm 3. "Projects" Space Systems/Loral. Internet. Available: http://www.ssloral.com/html/products/products.html 4. "Launch Schedules" Hughes. Internet. 16 Feb. 2000. Available: http://www.hughes.com/HUGHES/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?pageid=ProductsTechnologies&Container=com.webridge.entity.Entity[OID[5F32DCF03375F74093D3D1B99CA2CC66]] 5. "Satellites Systems Ground stations" TRW. Internet. 18 Feb. 2000. Available: http://www.trw.com/systems_it/defsatsn2.html Read More