Not long ago, we were able to witness the historic landing on the comet’s nucleus. Soon another probe arrives in previously unexplored corners of our solar system – awoke from hibernation NASA’s New Horizons probe, which in July next year is to explore Pluto.
Nine years ago when the New Horizons spacecraft from Cape Canaveral competed in Florida, Pluto was still considered a planet. Now, along with four other astronomical objects classified as a dwarf planet, but that does not mean that astronomers became less interesting object. About discovered in 1930, a celestial body is still little known. For example, the four moons of Pluto were discovered only in the last ten years. New Horizons spacecraft will be the first spacecraft to examine the brightest object in the Kuiper belt.
It was launched January 19, 2006 year, and a year later took pictures of Jupiter and its moons. In 2008, New Horizons passed the orbit of Saturn, in 2011 – Uranus, and in August of this year – Neptune. Overcoming nearly five billion kilometers, it took her only nine years old. Poll owes it to the fact that it is a vehicle that left the Earth with the highest in the history of speed (58 536 km / h). Jupiter Gravity assist her even more accelerated.
At present, the probe is 261 million km from its target. Over the next months, NASA will be prepared to meet the New Horizons Pluto – at a speed with which the ship is moving the research will be very little time. Although the speed of the probe relative to the sun is significantly reduced, New Horizons, and so there is no fuel to slow down and enter the orbit of Pluto. Therefore, after the completion of all possible measurements, the probe will head towards the other Kuiper belt objects, which, if lucky the permits, you will study for the next five years.
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