New Horizons Update - January 24, 2006
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 24 Jan 2006 14:53:16 -0800
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspectives/piPerspective_current.html
The PI's Perspective
Alan Stern
On The Road at Last
January 24, 2006
New Horizons is en route to Pluto. I was told at a post-launch party
down in Cocoa Beach that our launch came five years to the day from the
date NASA released the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission Announcement of
Opportunity (AO) that resulted in our selection to build and launch New
Horizons. Amazing!
Even more amazing, given all the political and technical hurdles, we
managed to launch onto the earliest-arrival flight time trajectory we
could have possibly launched onto - just 9.5 years, from Earth to
Pluto.
As you know, we faced possible arrival times as late as 2020 for
launches even a few weeks late and as late as 2021 if we had slipped to
a 2007 launch. What a team of dedicated, hard working people can do
when
they have a challenge is just magic. And the New Horizons team is
magic.
Now that we are launched and safely on our way, we know that our
journey
will take precisely 3462.7 days, i.e., from 19:00 UTC on Jan, 19, 2006,
to 12:00 UTC July 14, 2015, to reach Pluto. Encounter science
operations
will begin about 150 days before we reach Pluto.
As I write this, on flight day 4, we have roughly 0.1% of the journey
behind us. In those four days, the spacecraft team has been conducting
subsystem checkouts and designing the trajectory correction maneuvers
planned to trim up our route of flight to the precise aim point 2.5
million kilometers from Jupiter, at approximately 05:41 UTC on Feb. 28,
2007.
On Sunday, we completed the spacecraft's planned spin down to 5 RPM (it
was 68 RPM for the STAR-48 firing, and 19.2 RPM after an open-loop burn
on launch day). Once we did that, we did the initial star tracker
turn-on. Until the star-tracker is fully operational, we're still
relying on the Sun sensors and Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) for
attitude reference - both of which performed very well.
Because of the extremely accurate launch our Atlas V/STAR-48 launcher
combination provided, we only need to provide an 18 meter-per-second
correction in order to thread that needle at Jupiter. Pre-launch
predicts had allowed for maneuvers 5 to 10 times that size. We're all
very happy to only have a small correction to make, since this saves
propellant for future science mission use. The 18 m/sec correction is
planned to be conducted in two parts: a 5 m/sec increment on Jan. 28
and
a 13.3 m/sec increment on Jan. 30. We split the maneuvering into two
parts to calibrate our propulsion system with a small first burn before
going for the majority of the correction. This strategy will allow us
to
thread the needle more accurately than a single larger burn would have.
A couple of other tidbits you may be interested in:
* About the heliocentric distance, we will be inside 1 Astronomical
Unit (AU) until late on Jan. 29 UTC. That makes us officially an
inner planet mission for the first 10 days, I guess.
* We will pass the orbit of Mars on April 8, just a little after
the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gets there - and it had a 5.5-month
head start.
* Closest approach to Jupiter will occur at approximately 6 hours
UTC on Feb. 28, 2007. A better number will be forthcoming, but
that is good to an accuracy of better than an hour already.
Closest approach is at 32 Jupiter radii. Because we have to slow
down in Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM)-1A and TCM-1B by
those 18 meters per second, our third stage will beat us to
Jupiter. However, because it will not hit the Pluto aim point, it
will not beat us to Pluto. (Which is a relief - can you imagine
us
being the second to arrive at Pluto after all this, having been
beat by a derelict Boeing upper stage?) In fact, because the
third
stage cannot trim up its trajectory, it will not cross Pluto's
orbit until Oct. 15, 2015. And when it does, it'll be about 200
million kilometers (roughly the distance from the Sun to Mars)
from Pluto.
We're beginning to think seriously now about specific planning for
Jupiter, and I will have more to say about that soon. In the meantime,
enjoy the images below.
.
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