New Horizons Update - February 7, 2005

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.html

New Horizons
Mission Update from PI Alan Stern

The PI's Perspective
February 7, 2005

An inside look at New Horizons from Principal Investigator Alan Stern
February 2005

Being the mission principal investigator for New Horizons is a
fascinating and rewarding experience. With this inaugural monthly
column, I am going to begin sharing some of my thoughts and experiences
about leading the mission with you. But in this first column, I'll
simply give you a mission status report.

With this monthly column I am also going to run a picture of the month.
This month's picture is of the core New Horizons spacecraft and science
team. It was taken in November 2004 at the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the spacecraft is
being built.

New Horizons spacecraft integration and test efforts continue. As of
late 2004, the spacecraft structure had been outfitted with its
propulsion system, and engineering models of all of its "A side"
avionics. Also aboard the spacecraft are the flight star trackers, Sun
sensors, and five of the seven scientific instruments. The primary
flight avionics, the power distribution unit, and the flight inertial
measurement units (IMUs) are planned for integration by the end of
February. Other important project milestones achieved of late include
Los Alamos National Laboratories' completion of fuel processing for the
radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) that would be used on the
mission and another successful flight of the Atlas V launch vehicle
family on which New Horizons would fly if NASA decides to proceed with
the mission and obtains Presidential launch approval.

This is going to be very busy year for all of us on the project. In
2005
we plan to complete the construction of the spacecraft, put it through
numerous tests and then environmental qualifications (shaking it to
simulate launch, putting it in a thermal vacuum chamber for two months
of "space" testing), and conduct mission simulations. This fall there
will be shipment to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida,
followed by more testing there.

Also during 2005, we will commemorate two important historical
milestones. This month - on February 18 - we're celebrating the 75th
anniversary of Clyde Tombaugh's 1930 discovery of our main mission
target, Pluto. In December, we'll celebrate the 100th anniversary of
Gerard Kuiper's birth. Kuiper is the astronomer most closely associated
with the concept of a debris belt beyond the giant planets - which is
now called the Kuiper Belt in his honor. After reconnoitering Pluto and
its moon, Charon, New Horizons hopes to fly on to encounter at least
one
Kuiper Belt Object.

That's it for now. Next month, expect an insider's take on how it feels
to be building humankind's "first mission to the last planet."

- Alan Stern