On Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 12:50:25 PM UTC-5, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
wrote:
On Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 9:46:43 AM UTC-5, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
wrote:
On Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:51:04 AM UTC-5, JBI wrote:
Cannot find this information anywhere, but curious where New Horizons
would be heading in the long term, in other words what star? And also
are there any more visits to other objects planned besides the latest?
Thank you.
It seems to be heading in the general direction of Xi 1,2 Sagittarii,
less than a degree to the east of those stars, perhaps.

Different from the Pioneer and Voyager probes (and the future Project
Breakthrough Starshot), New Horizons is (currently) not supposed to leave
the Sol system in the first place, but to investigate Kuiper Belt objects
“at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit”. (Originally it was not
even supposed to explore beyond Pluto–Charon; the Kuiper Belt mission is
already the mission extension).

Read the mission description before you jump to conclusions (extrapolate a
trajectory) only from a *current* heading.

The thing is heading OUT of the Solar System on an interstellar trajectory.

Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

You are living proof.

That the *current* heading of NH
is away from Sol does not mean that it has to be so *in the future*. And it
does not mean that it is heading towards any particular other star. Not
only was it never supposed to, but, put simply, space is big.

How did you get this idea of “in the general direction of Xi 1,2 Sagittarii,
less than a degree to the east of those stars, perhaps” anyway?


Find out where on the "celestial sphere" Pluto was in July 2015. Find out what stars are in that area. That's roughly where the spacecraft is going.


Its current heading is approximately the same one it had after it had passed
Pluto-Charon in July 2015. Unless it hits something substantial, it's gone.

We will see. Ultima Thule is 43.23 AU away from Sol. The Kuiper Belt is
estimated to have a radius of 50 AU. The termination shock is at 75 AU to
90 AU. The heliopause is at 120 AU. The Sol System’s Hill sphere has a
radius of up to 3 ly. NH does have 4 × 4.4 N thrusters for trajectory
corrections; the Voyagers had only 4 × 0.89 N each.

The spacecraft was launched on an Atlas V that had a third stage. It reached lunar distance from Earth in NINE hours. There can't be enough fuel on the probe to do much more than deflect its trajectory slightly.