On July 14th , the New Horizons spacecraft will make history when it sails past Pluto , formerly bonk as the 9th satellite . Even more incredible is how fast we get there . The spacecraft traveled 3 billion miles in nine and a half year . That ’s about a million miles a twenty-four hours for almost ten years . How the heck did we do it ?
size of it and timing matter a lot . So did Jupiter . Since the former days of the Space Age , we ’ve learn to exploit nature to shave years off our interplanetary journeys . Here ’s how humanity ’s very first Pluto mission made the prospicient haul at breakneck speed .
The Fastest Launch In History
On the afternoon of January 19th , 2006 , a pianissimo - sized ballistic capsule weighing 1,040 Irish pound roared into the sky aboard an Atlas V rocket . Separating from its solid fuel - recoil motor after just 45 minutes , New Horizons was flung away from the Earth at solar organization escape speed , roughly36,000 miles per hour . It was the gamey speed at which a spacecraft has ever escaped Earth ’s soberness well , besting the previous launch speed criminal record ( 32 , 400 mph ) set by the Pioneer 10 investigation in 1972 .
New Horizons Launch aboard an Atlas V rocket . Goodbye everlastingly , Earth . figure credit : NASA / KSC
How did we get New Horizons off the ground so fast ? Basically , size . The compact craft was plan to run luminosity on power and fuel , reserving most of its consignment for its seven onboard science instruments . At liftoff , the New Horizons actuation system included only 170 pound of hydrazine propellant . That ’s a minuscule amount when you consider the craftsmanship ’s journeying , but it was intended to be used only for trajectory corrections and spinup / spindown maneuvers .
In other words , New Horizon ’s ten year , 3 billion - plus mile journey would be basically propulsion - free . ( Now if that does n’t go like the good railway car sale lurch , ever . )
After liftoff , New Horizons receive extra speed boost from Earth ’s orbital motion around the sun , which is just about 18.6 mile per second tangential to the orbital path . totally , then , the space vehicle barreled into the solar system with a heliocentric ( Lord’s Day - proportional ) speed of nearly 100 thousand knot per minute .
The timing of the launch was critical . Based on the orbital position of the Earth , NASA was look at a scant window , from mid - January through other February 2006 , in which the New Horizons ballistic capsule could be launch to make a close liberty chit by Jupiter in 2007 . And we needed Jupiter swelled time .
The fastest road between two points on Earth may be a square line , but when it comes to prohibited solar system exploration , nothing beats a little cosmic kick from Jupiter ’s monolithic gravity well .
Jupiter’s Big Gravity Assist
Thanks to its quick start , New Horizons made the 500 million mile journey to Jupiter in just over a yr , faster than any of theseven previous Jupiter - bound missionary work . But the Sunday ’s gravitational pull is relentless , and by the time New Horizons arrive at Jupiter in early 2007 , it had slowed to ( a mere ! ) 43,000 miles per minute . Jupiter would help New Horizons regain what it had turn a loss .
As it draw near the gas titan , New Horizons began to speed up once more , reeled in by Jupiter ’s prodigious somberness , which also play to turn the spacecraft ’s trajectory . On February 28th , 2007 , the tiny investigation made its near overture to the gas giant and then flung itself off , snagging a chip of Jupiter ’s impulse in a move that rocket scientists call a ‘ gravity assist . ’ Essentially , as New Horizons was dragged into Jupiter ’s gravitative field , it gained kinetic muscularity amounting to almost 9,000 miles per 60 minutes worth of velocity , increasing its speed to over 52,000 miles per hour .
To balance the books , Jupiter lost as much kinetic energy as New Horizons gained , causing it to settle a little close to the Lord’s Day . A class on Jupiter today is somewhat inadequate than it was before — all because humans want to get a good look at Pluto .
New Horizons ’ heliocentric velocity during its mission , via JHU mission conception papers by Guo & Farquhar
The effect of Jupiter ’s gravity assist can be seen on the graphical record above , which shows us the ballistic capsule ’s heliocentric velocity as a function of removed from the Sun . For equivalence , the graph below shows Voyager 2 ’s flight across our solar organization from 1977 to 1989 . As you’re able to see , Voyager 2 used several gravity assist to keep up a quick pace as it tour the planet in our outer solar organisation . Both ballistic capsule continued to lose speed as they headed into the outer solar system , but at a decreasing charge per unit as the Sun ’s gravity field weakened . ( The weakening gravitational pulling of the Sun also explains why solar arrangement scat velocity decreases as we travel outwards . )
icon via Cmglee , Wikipedia
Voyager ’s clever route afforded the spacecraft a serial of speed boost while allowing it to pile up a trove of erratic science data point . Likewise , New Horizon ’s Jupiter roundabout way sent back a wealth of fascinating intel on our solar system ’s expectant major planet , revealing lightning near the poles , the internal structure of volcanoes on Io , and the path of charged particle traversing the duration of the gas giant ’s long magnetic tail .
Oh , and it also shaved three full years off the trip to Pluto .
The Approach and Beyond
For the next seven and a half years , New Horizons sailed softly across interplanetary blank , on the longest stage of its journeying . Its last major waypoint before the Pluto glide path come on August 25 , 2014 , when made another record , span Neptune ’s celestial orbit some 2.75 billion Admiralty mile away from the Earth in eight years , eight months . ( Coincidentally , NASA ’s Voyager 2 ballistic capsule made its much closer Neptune pass 25 years earlier to the day . A cosmic co-occurrence , perhaps , but one thateverybody took as a bright signof what was to come . )
To put the full flight in perspective , here are a few images from NASA :
Images viaNASA
For the preceding year , New Horizons has continued to stay the class , losing speed slowly as it approaches Pluto . Still , New Horizons ’s historic flyby wo n’t exactly be a easy saunter . At 11:50 UTC on July 14th , the spacecraft will sail past Pluto at a blistering 30,000 miles per hour comparative to the dwarf planet ’s surface .
After New Horizonsspends some metre search Pluto and its three moon , it ’ll hopefully continue on to the Kuiper belt , a vast lip of primordial , wintry debris that encircle our solar arrangement . The three forebode Kupiter Belt Objects , or KBOs , NASA has ID’d as targets are all roughly a billion miles from Pluto , and it ’ll take New Horizons another three to four years to reach any of them . NASA is waiting to get some skill back from the primary Pluto charge before gain a final decision on the Kuiper Belt extension . In the meanwhile , we ’re left with the creative thinker - blowing possibility that by 2020 , New Horizons could be beaming rest home data point on a cosmic graveyard four billion miles forth .
And after the Kuiper smash ? New Horizons is expected to eventually join Voyager 1 and 2 as the third human probe to enter interstellar space . Launched nearly 40 years ago , both of the Voyager probe are still in communication with the Earth as they vagabond about the cosmic boondocks . It ’s impossible to say just how far from home any of these probes will get .
But if one thing ’s clear , it ’s that New Horizon ’s astounding journey has only just set out .
Correction 7/12/15 : An earlier rendering of this post stated that a year on Jupiter is more or less longer than it used to be because of the New Horizons gravity assist . Because Jupiter ’s orbital period decrease slightly after the loss of energising energy , a class on Jupiter is , in fact , slightly shorter than it used to be .
touch the author at[email protected]or follow heron Twitter .
Top image : Pluto and its moon Charon , captured by New Horizons on July 8th from a distance of 3.7 million naut mi . Via NASA - JHUAPL - SWRI
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