Pluto And New Horizon

1. Saurabh Jindal
14101002
3rd Semester
Aerospace Engineering
PLUTO AND NEW HORIZONS

2. NEW HORIZONS
NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission:
“The First Mission To the Ninth
Planet
And the Solar System’s Third Zone”

3.  VOYAGER 1, 1980, flyby Saturn, flyby TITAN
 VOYAGER 2, August 1989, flyby of Neptune
Earlier Attempts

4.  A ring of bodies beyond Neptune
 Pluto, the first KBO to be discovered
Kuiper Belt

5. Pluto: A Little Background
Pluto was discovered in January-
February 1930, by Clyde Tombaugh at
Lowell Observatory, Arizona.
 Pluto is a Small, Distant World
 <1% Mars’s Max Apparent Diameter (0.1 arcsec)
 And 50,000 times fainter than Mars (V~14)

6. Discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh on February 18, 1930. The object
moved, the background stars did not. Lick Observatory images are 1 day
apart

7.  International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the
authority on such matters
 To be a planet, Pluto must:
 Orbit the Sun
 Be round
 Clear the neighborhood around its orbit
 Leaves us with 8 “planets”
 If only “round” and “orbit Sun”, 12 or more
What Is a Planet?

8. Pluto’s Orbit
 248 years to orbit Sun
 Elliptical
 Sometimes is closer to Sun than
Neptune
 Happened 1979-1999
 Inclined (out of plane)
 Never actually crosses Neptune’s
orbit
 Orbits sun exactly 2x when
Neptune orbits 3x

10. Launch of NEW HORIZON

11. Janvier 12 2006
Workshop 3e zone Slide 11
New Horizons trajectory
Pluto-Charon
14 July 2015
KBOs
2016-2020
Jupiter System
28 Feb 2007
Launch
19 Jan 2006

12. Janvier 12 2006Workshop 3e zone Slide 12
Instrument Payload
SWAP
Solar wind
analyzer
PEPSSI
Energetic
particle detector
LORRI
Long-range
visible imager
Ralph
visible pan. and color imager,
IR spectrometer
Alice
UV imaging
spectrometer
REX
Radio science & radiometry
Star Trackers
Guidance and control
+Y
+X
+Z
SDC
Student dust counter
(under spacecraft)

13. JUPITER FLYBY
Jupiter science included studies of Jovian meteorology,
satellite geology and composition,
Auroral phenomena, and magnetospheric physics.
C/A Date 28 Feb 2007
Range 32 RJupiter

14. Janvier 12 2006Workshop 3e zone Slide 14
New Horizons at Pluto
Closest Approach 2015 July 14
• S/C trajectory time ticks: 10 min
• Charon orbit time ticks: 12 hr
• Occultation: center time
• Position and lighting at Pluto C/A
• Distance relative to body center
Pluto
Charon
0.24°
Sun
Earth
12:40
13:40
11:40
Pluto C/A
11:59:00
11,095 km
13.77 km/s
Charon C/A
12:12:52
26,937 km
13.87 km/s
Pluto-Sun Occultation
12:49:00
Pluto-Earth Occultation
12:49:50
Charon-Sun Occultation
14:15:41
Charon-Earth Occultation
14:17:50

15. Pluto on 13th July,2015

16. Pluto on 14th July, 2015

17.  Kuiper Belt Object mission
 Within 55 AU distance
 33kg of fuel left
FUTURE OBJECTIVES

18. THANK YOU
ANY QUESTIONS???