At
approximately 9:30 pm EST( 6:30 pm PST or 2:30 pm UTC), on Saturday
(December 6), the New Horizons spacecraft will wake up from its 18
month hibernation. As soon as the craft wakes up it will send a
confirmation back to Earth that will take about 6 hours to travel the
2.9 billion miles distance. Once it sends the confirmation the craft
will start preperations for the final leg of its mission to get a
close up look at Pluto.
“New
Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space –
nearly three billion miles from home – but its rest is nearly
over,” stated Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager
at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL)
in Maryland. “It’s time for New Horizons to wake up, get to work,
and start making history.”
At
2:00 pm EST (11:00 am PST or 7:00pm UTC) on January 19, 2006 an Atlas
V rocket carrying the New
Horizons spacecraft lifted off from launch site 41 at Cape
Canaveral, Florida. From there the craft start its 9 and a half year
journey to get a close-up look at what was then considered the 9th
major planet in our solar system. In Feburary of 2007 the craft did a
flyby of the planet Jupiter where it sent back so scientific data
about the planet as well give a gravitational assist on it long
journey still ahead. That long journey will end on July 14, 2015 when
New Horizons will make its close approach (2,600 miles) to the dwarf
planet.
"This
is the first look at this new zone of rocky, icy planets,"
Michael Buckley, a public information officer for John Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory told ABC News. "This is
what New Horizons is supposed to do."
It
was in 1905 that astronomer Percival Lowell first hinted that there
was a 9th
planet in the solar system. It was
not until after Mr. Lowell died that his prediction was proved right
when Clyde Tombaugh, working at the Lowell observatory, caught sight
of the planet. Most of what we know about the planet is from
observation, estimation and small amounts of data gathered by the
Mariner and Voyager spacecraft. Until its discovery in 1978 we did
not even think Pluto had a moon.
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