This is the fastest and recommend farthest to thoroughly examine the objects of the solar system. NASA was it in the cosmos January 19, 2006 year using the Atlas V rocket with the highest speed I’ve ever managed to send anything from Earth. New Horizons (New Horizons) almost immediately after takeoff reached a speed of over 16 kilometers per second, which is almost 60 thousand. kilometers per hour. But it is not everything. Soon she had even accelerate – the speed of almost 23 kilometers per second.
directed her to escape trajectory from the solar system toward Pluto, formerly the farthest and smallest planet Agreement, and since August 2006 deprived of the name. Today, Pluto belongs to the category of dwarf planets called. plutonków that they are transneptunami, and thus lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, a very far – or already in the Kuiper Belt, or in an even more distant known. the scattered disc.
Although the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto a full-fledged planet titers – apart from the name – little has changed. Pluto still is remarkable – distant, mysterious and unusual.
July 14 probe flew past him at a distance of more than 11 thousand. km, and its largest moon, Charon, only 26 thousand. km. This makes it much more we learn about Pluto, Charon and the other four moons of Pluto. This is one of the most important and the most distant human missions in space.
We already know that Pluto is slightly larger than suggested by the previous calculations, while its mass is as previously agreed. Therefore, it must be constructed of more lighter than water ice rock. Until yesterday, scientists estimated that consists of 70 percent. from the rocks and in 30 percent. of ice. Now it seems that these proportions are different.
At the moment, the probe is moving toward a wide area of asteroids, comets and cosmic debris called the Kuiper Belt. It extends beyond the orbit of Neptune in the area from 30 to 50 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is the distance separating the Earth from the Sun). Kuiper belt is a torus (torus has the shape of a donut or an inner tube) which circulates over 70 thousand. objects with a diameter greater than 100 km.
Smaller difficult to count. It is a remnant of the formation of the entire solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, similar to the asteroid belt close to us, lying between Mars and Jupiter, only much larger and more massive. Pluto is one of the most important elements of the Belt.
Kuiper Belt, New Horizons will explore in more detail some object – or more objects – now still do not know what exactly. Similar to Pluto, at least when it comes to size, there are a few: Varuna Iksjon, Makemake and Haumea. Then maybe you fly once more, at the final reaches of the solar system, and may even share the fate of Voyager and Pioneer probes that fly in space galaxy. The probe Voyager 1 has left the solar system and already this space travels.
New Horizons is the size of a piano and weighs almost half a ton. The hull of the probe is made of aluminum, shaped like a prism. The probe is equipped with seven advanced testing instruments and cameras. To be able to work and that New Horizons could send data to Earth – now their transmission to station Deep Space Network in Australia due to the distance from the Earth takes almost five hours – probe also received using radioisotope thermoelectric cell to produce electricity decay of plutonium (not It is powered by photovoltaic panels, because it operates too far from the Sun).
On board, placed a CD with a list of names of 435 thousand. people from all over the world, the American flag, a piece of the fuselage first private spaceplane Space Ship One and aluminum container with the ashes of Pluto’s discoverer – Clyde Tombaugh.
After 2020. probe, if you survive and keep in good condition, will be able to follow on, and further still scattered disc, and then Oort cloud, the farthest cluster of solar system matter. The trip there will take many years and so we will have to wait for the results of the probe.
Is the designers and those who sent it into space, live to see this? He says prof. Tomasz Bulik of the Astronomical Observatory of Warsaw University Faculty of Physics, projects such as the construction of space are cathedrals. The largest and finest in Europe generally being built several generations. Those who raised the foundations, rarely able to enter the finished building.
New Horizons also can become the cathedral of many generations on the edge of our nearest space.
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