According to NASA's official website reported that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is about to enter the first phase of work has begun to carry out observations of Pluto, and to this year's July 14, the spacecraft will arrive from the nearest Pluto position, in the depths of distant space of about 7.5 billion kilometers from Earth for the first time on the dwarf planet we know little about the investigation carried out.
Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington director Jim Green (Jim Green) said: "NASA's first execution this probe to Pluto mission will be achieved within the first human cold and distant planet in the solar system for the first time . proximity detection, "he said:" new Horizons spacecraft team is now working very hard to prepare for the first phase of the work to carry out observations and to ensure that all the work will be performed flawlessly. "
New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft launch, in January 2006, it launched during equipment to save power and reduce losses while several are set to deep sleep state, and just last month, New Horizons number from a recent deep sleep state is successfully awakened, this time it has more than 3 billion miles from Earth (about 4.8 billion kilometers), will soon be close to Pluto. When the nearest distance between Pluto New Horizons and will have even closer than all five known satellite of Pluto. In order to be well prepared for such a close flyby of action, scientists and engineers of the project team from January 25, 2015 began to guide the ship from the piano-sized spacecraft to Pluto far distance observation.
The New Horizons spacecraft, using "long-distance survey Imager" (LORRI) The captured image will help the project scientists understand the continuous improvement of the Pluto system. In addition, these images will also play a key role in the follow navigation work on the detector, ensuring that New Horizons spacecraft in the next remaining approximately 220 million km journey can be safely passed.
Alan Stern (Alan Stern) New Horizons spacecraft is Chief Scientist, NASA from the Southwest Research Institute, he said: "New Horizons spacecraft arrived in the history of mankind from the Earth after starting the main probe target farthest detectors, and now we are finally ready to start work. "
"Long Distance Survey Imager" (LORRI) will shoot hundreds of images of Pluto in the coming months to help scientists continue to improve estimates of the distance between the probe and Pluto. Although until May, all the Pluto New Horizons spacecraft images taken will only be a small bright spot, however, puts these images help scientists navigation Task Force set the proper trajectory correction parameters to ensure that the ship can this summer by Pluto safety system. The first time such a trajectory correction operation will be carried out in March 2015.
Mark Hodder Ridge (Mark Holdridge) is New Horizons Pluto rendezvous mission director, from Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). He said: "We need to know exactly when the New Horizons spacecraft arrived there, Pluto location Pluto transit time point must be very precise, because the computer will adjust the spacecraft on spacecraft toward based on pre-set time, and. the detection device at where the position of Pluto, but we put the image captured by helping us to set precise time and location parameters. "
Starting this month "optical navigation" action will be taken on the photo and Pluto debut for determining the specific location of the latter.
Now find ourselves first "approach phase" will continue until the end of spring, New Horizons will perform a series of important scientific operation during this period. Scientific payload on the spacecraft will continuously collect interplanetary space environmental data, including measurements of energetic particles emitted from the sun and the diffuse nature of the Kuiper Belt dust particles inside space and so on. In addition to Pluto, the solar system outside of the remote areas in this uncharted edge may never hidden thousands of smaller icy or rocky planet.
From this spring, observations of Pluto will be greatly enhanced, the New Horizons spacecraft equipped with cameras and spectrometers will begin to be able to get the quality and resolution than the most powerful telescopes on the planet Pluto clear image. Eventually, the New Horizons spacecraft will begin to get a sufficiently high quality image, which can be used to Pluto and its moons for accuracy unprecedented global mapping.
Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington Headquarters New Horizons spacecraft took the management authority. NASA Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Dr. Alan Stern, chief scientist of the entire exploration projects. Southwest Research Institute is responsible for overall scientific group New Horizons probe project, load operation and scientific exploration work during Pluto flyby. New Horizons spacecraft is a project under NASA's "New Frontier" (New Frontiers) program, which by the Alabama NASA Marshall Space Flight Center manages. Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University to design, build the New Horizons spacecraft and is responsible for the overall operation of the planning of the spacecraft.
(Author: Morrowind)
Licensing and commercial cooperation, please contact zhidaoribao@baidu.com, Baidu know the daily chase responsibility and rights reserved.
Article Source: Baidu know daily (http://zhidao.baidu.com/daily)
Original link: http: //zhidao.baidu.com/daily/view id = 3599?