Posted on 01/19/2006 12:49:55 PM PST by djf
Cloud Cover Delays New Horizons Launch For 1:45 p.m. EST Thursday, January 19:
Today's launch is now slated for no earlier than 2:00 p.m. EST (1900 GMT), delayed due to thick cloud cover over the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site. Today's launch window runs until 3:07 p.m. EST (2007 GMT).
New Horizons was originally slated to launch today at 1:08 p.m. EST (1808 GMT), though it has a launch window that extends for one-hour and 59 minute launch window. NASA has an opportunity to launch the spacecraft each day until Feb. 14, but must launch by Feb. 2 to snag a gravity boost from a Jupiter flyby next year. If the spacecraft lauches by Jan. 28, it is expected to reach Pluto by July 2015.
A Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 booster equipped with five strap-on boosters will launch New Horizons on what NASA has billed its fastest mission to fly. The spacecraft's trajectory will shoot it past the Moon's orbit in about nine hours - compared to the three days it took astroanuts to reach the satellite aboard Apollo spacecraft, NASA officials have said.
At about eight feet (2.5 meters) in width and a weight of about 1,025 pounds (465 kilograms), the $700 million New Horizons mission is designed to fly past Pluto and its moon Charon - as well as two other potential moons discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope last year. The probe carries seven primary instruments to study the distant planet and other Kuiper Belt Objects.
9 years? Whatever happened to warp drive?
Hey, them DiLithium crystals ain't cheap!
Wow, the way things are going on here, we may not be around to receive the first message from the space craft.
Track down Zefram Cochrane and tell him to get off his butt.
Kind of amazing how far we've lagged in space travel compared to where the SciFi writers had us... I mean, I suppose many thought manned missions to Jupiter by 2001 were plausible when the film came out.. or true AI (Hal).
Doesn't sound like a Marine.
Well reality does have a way of kncking at the door sometimes. My plan would be to nuke them first, that would solve the problem for oh, about 10,000 years. But we won't until we get nuked first.
All we've done is pass the decision about which culture will survive on to our grandchildren.
Yep, I agree.
Hey! Where are the SuperConservatives who Just Know that spending money on exploration is UnConstitutional??? Shouldn't they be here by now?
Pluto probe launches from Florida
By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter
New Horizons blasts off from Cape Canaveral on 19 January, Getty Images
Watch the launch
The US space agency, Nasa, has successfully launched its New Horizons mission to Pluto.
The probe lifted off at 1900 GMT aboard an Atlas 5 rocket on a 10-year journey to the planet, which lies more than five billion km from Earth.
The $700m probe will gather information on Pluto and its moons before - it is hoped - pressing on to explore other objects in the outer Solar System.
Pluto is the only remaining planet that has never been visited by a spacecraft.
The spacecraft was launched after being postponed for two consecutive days due to bad weather and technical difficulties.
On Tuesday, controllers stood down the flight due to high winds at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station pad in Florida.
Then a power failure at the Maryland laboratory managing the mission forced that launch attempt to be halted.
Slingshot manoeuvre
Sending up the probe before 3 February means it will be in position to swing by Jupiter on its way to Pluto.
New Horizons will use Jupiter's gravity to pick up speed in a slingshot manoeuvre.
Artist's impression of New Horizons probe, Image: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)
Mission Guide: New Horizons
This will increase the probe's speed away from the Sun by nearly 4km/s, allowing the spacecraft to reach the ninth planet by July 2015.
If the launch had been pushed beyond the 3 February, the probe would have been required to take a direct route to Pluto, arriving in 2018 at the earliest.
Some astronomers say Pluto is not a true planet at all, and should be classed instead alongside the small, icy objects which make up the region of space known as the Kuiper Belt.
This region, which lies beyond Neptune, consists of perhaps tens of thousands of icy objects spread out between 30 and 50 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Double planet
Pluto is thought by some to form a "double planet" with its companion Charon.
New Horizons will fly by Pluto and Charon on the same day. The spacecraft's seven instruments will carry out detailed mapping of Pluto's surface features, composition and atmosphere.
"The probe will map the composition of materials on the surface of Pluto [and Charon], which will help tell us what molecules were present during the formation of this system," Dr Stephen Lowry of Queen's University in Belfast, UK, told the BBC News website.
After the Pluto encounter, it is up to Nasa to decide whether to grant the spacecraft an extended mission. Should this happen, mission scientists plan to send New Horizons to visit two Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) with diameters of 50km (30 miles) or more.
Scientists believe they can learn about the evolution of the Solar System by studying the Kuiper Belt since it possesses debris left over form its formation.
They're all busy on the latest multiple Elvis Bin Laden tape threads whining about there not being a "real" declaration of war.
I just got off the phone with our local radio news reader (WREC 600, Memphis) about her story on this from the 3 PM news. What she said was that it would take 9 years to reach Pluto and the edge of our Galaxy. She accepted the fact that there is a difference between the distance to the edge of our Solar System and the edge of the Galaxy, but defended the goof by saying it was what the Fox News Radio feed had written. She would correct it for future news updates and was gleeful about contacting Fox to dig them about it.
In explaining the difference to her I did use the line "this ain't Star Trek." She really liked that one and was going to use it in her message back up to Fox.
What do they teach in school now a days?
"9 years? Whatever happened to warp drive?"
Considering the distances involve, nine years ain't bad.
Recall that the Apollo moon missions took nearly 4 days to transit to lunar orbit; this spacecraft will pass the moon's orbit in nine hours. Once it get's it's boost from Jupiter, it will be cruising at approximately 47,000 MPH.
Not bad.
Yikes! Pluto must be a far away. Are we there yet?
A Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 booster equipped with five strap-on boosters will launch New Horizons on what NASA has billed its fastest mission to fly. ==
Do you know that this rocket uses RUSSIAN-BUILT RD-180 engine? I'm sure that MSM did never mentioned it:))).
Don't you know? Everyone in Russia is drunk and picking their arse, it snows year round and polar bears walk the streets. Hell, they're still trying to figure out how to rub two sticks together for fire, how could anything technological come out of there? The MSM told me so.
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