New Horizons Update - March 2, 2005

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piP...e_03_2005.html

New Horizons Mission News
March 2, 2005

The PI's Perspective

An Inside Look at New Horizons from Principal Investigator Alan Stern

March 2005

I like to refer to New Horizons as "The First Mission to the Last
Planet." Of course, that isn't true - Pluto isn't the last planet at
all
- it's just the last one recognized by most textbooks. Most planetary
astronomers recognize that the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are littered
with dwarf worlds lying still farther out, beyond Pluto. So while this
little catch phrase is technically incorrect, it nevertheless captures
the spirit of what New Horizons is about - the first-time exploration
of
a frontier world.

As New Horizons transforms itself from requirements databases,
engineering drawings, PowerPoint presentations and software flow
diagrams to boards, boxes and a spacecraft bus on the cleanroom floor
at
the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, I find myself filled with
pride. The United States is making history for all humankind in
building
this craft and planning to set it forth on a journey that could forever
be written in textbooks as the first exploration of a whole new class
of
bodies in a wholly unexplored region of the solar system - the Kuiper
Belt.

In the past month, the spacecraft has seen its high-gain antenna come
aboard for an important fit check, and seen both its flight power
system
and main computer qualified and installed. The bird also received a
guidance, navigation and control software load, and the first testing
of
the autonomy system (that provides for fault protection) has taken
place. Coming soon to the spacecraft are the redundant flight computer,
the gyros and the Ralph remote-sensing package.

We are now approaching the time - only weeks away - when the last
avionics box goes on the spacecraft and New Horizons is dressed in
thermal blankets for environmental testing in a large vacuum chamber at
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Last Friday, the 45-day public comment period opened for the mission's
Draft Environmental Impact Statement - an important step in the
National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and launch-approval processes. On March
29 and 30, NASA will host meetings in Cocoa, Florida, where the public
can comment on the environmental impact statement and learn more about
the proposed mission and the steps NASA takes in deciding whether or
not
to conduct the launch. After these NEPA reviews, if NASA decides to
proceed with the mission, the spacecraft will be ready for the January
2006 launch opportunity.

But New Horizons won't be complete when all of the instruments and
avionics are aboard, or even when the thermal blankets are dressed out.
I remind myself, there is still a flag to be emblazoned on the
spacecraft, symbolizing the pioneering nation that paid for this
historic voyage of exploration.

- Alan Stern