Nasa news 2015 how to#

“There were lots of good ideas for how to do things in astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science,” Stern says. In October, this two-year second extended mission officially began, but in 2023 it will pick up the pace as the spacecraft exits hibernation and begins its scientific program in earnest. The sum total will be a new phase of the mission that is “really unique and interdisciplinary in nature,” says Alan Stern, the lead on the mission at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Texas. We definitely want to take advantage of that.”įor New Horizons, those “unique things” include unprecedented studies of the planets Uranus and Neptune, sampling of the local dust, studies of the background light in the universe, and more. There are so many unique things that a spacecraft that is out that far can do. “When you have a spacecraft that is out in that part of the solar system, it is a huge asset to the scientific community. “It takes a long time to get to where our spacecraft is,” says Alice Bowman, mission operations manager for New Horizons at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Maryland. It has now begun its second extended mission, and is soon set to wake up from a deep hibernation, opening a wealth of new science opportunities in the outer solar system. The spacecraft has continued its cruise toward interstellar frontiers ever since. New Horizons was launched from Earth in 2006 on a mission to visit Pluto, arriving in 2015 and revealing incredible details during its all-too-brief flyby. In hot pursuit, however, is a far more advanced vehicle, sporting improved instruments, updated optics, and even a means to sample the interstellar medium itself. They have sent back remarkable riches from this distant location, humanity’s first foray into the limitless bounds beyond our solar system’s edge. In 20, NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft respectively broke through the heliopause, the boundary at which our sun’s sphere of influence gives way to the interstellar medium. Only two spacecraft have ever left our solar system and lived to tell the tale.

Nasa news 2015