Clyde Tombaugh Goes To Pluto
- From: lorad474@xxxxxx
- Date: 23 Jan 2006 02:22:25 -0800
....aboard a 'plutonium' powered satellite. It's a good thing the launch
went Ok.
For educational purposes:
"Super Fast Spacecraft Zooms Toward Pluto
By MIKE SCHNEIDER The Associated Press Friday, January 20, 2006; 7:17
PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The fastest spacecraft ever launched began the
first full day of its 3-billion mile journey to Pluto, where it will
study the last unexplored planet and the mysterious icy area that
surrounds it.
The New Horizons spacecraft blasted off aboard an Atlas V rocket
Thursday afternoon in a spectacular start to the $700 million mission.
Despite the speed _ it can reach 36,000 mph _ it will take 9 1/2 years
to reach Pluto and the frozen, sunless reaches of the solar system.
An Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft on a mission to
the planet Pluto lifts off from launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006. It is
estimated the spacecraft will reach Pluto by July 2015. (AP Photo/Terry
Renna) (Terry Renna - AP)
"It looked beautiful," said Ralph McNutt Jr. of the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory, one of the mission's scientists.
"I was getting a little bit antsy."
The 1,054-pound spacecraft was loaded with seven instruments that will
photograph the surfaces of Pluto and its large moon, Charon, and
analyze Pluto's atmosphere. Two of the cameras, Alice and Ralph, are
named for the bickering couple from TV's "The Honeymooners."
New Horizons also contained some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the
astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. His widow, Patricia Tombaugh,
was in tears as she watched the launch from four mile away.
"I got emotional. I really did. I just got carried away," said
Tombaugh, 93, of Las Cruces, N.M. "It was so beautiful and we've waited
so long."
NASA had postponed the liftoff two straight days because of wind gusts
at the launch pad and a power outage at the spacecraft's control center
in Maryland.
Pluto is the solar system's most distant planet and the brightest body
in a zone known as the Kuiper Belt, which is made up of thousands of
icy, rocky objects, including tiny planets whose development was
stunted for unknown reasons. Scientists believe studying those
"planetary embryos" can help them understand how planets were formed.
Some astronomers question whether Pluto is technically a planet. Pluto
is a celestial oddball _ an icy dwarf unlike the rocky planets of
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars and the gaseous planets of Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
"We're realizing just how much there is to the deep, outer solar
system," said Alan Stern, the mission's principal investigator. "I
think it's exciting that textbooks have to be rewritten, over and
over."
Because it was launched in January, the spacecraft will be able to use
Jupiter's gravity as a sling to shave five years off the trip, allowing
it to arrive as early as July 2015.
The probe, powered by 24 pounds of plutonium, will not land on Pluto
but will photograph it, analyze its atmosphere and send data back
across the solar system to Earth.
Super Fast Spacecraft Zooms Toward Pluto
The launch went off without incident, to the relief of anti-nuclear
activists who had feared an accident could scatter lethal radioactive
material.
The probe will rely on the natural decay of the plutonium to generate
electricity for its instruments. NASA and the Energy Department had put
the chances of a launch accident that could release radiation at 1 in
350. As a precaution, the agencies brought in 16 mobile field teams
that can detect radiation and 33 air samplers and monitors.
An Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft on a mission to
the planet Pluto lifts off from launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006. It is
estimated the spacecraft will reach Pluto by July 2015. (AP Photo/Terry
Renna) (Terry Renna - AP)
"Certainly there are feelings of relief that we didn't have to actually
execute any of our contingency plans," said Bob Lay, emergency
management director for surrounding Brevard County.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin said he had an answer for those who
may question spending $700 million on the mission to a place in space
too far away to observe in any detail from Earth.
"Of what value do you think it might be to be able to study the
primordial constituents from which the solar system and all the planets
and we, ourselves, were formed?" Griffin said."
___
On the Net:
New Horizons Mission: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
Nuclear protesters: http://www.space4peace.org
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012000212_2.html
.
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