New Horizons Update - May 24, 2005

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/052405.htm

New Horizons
NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission
May 24, 2005

'Motivated' Team Eyes Mission's Next Stage

Pluto might be about 3 billion miles from Earth, but it seems a little
closer for the team leading NASA's proposed first mission to the "last
planet."

With spacecraft assembly and several successful mission simulations and
system performance tests behind them, New Horizons team members are
gearing up for the mission's next stage: pre-launch space environment
testing. In early June, the spacecraft is scheduled to move from the
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel,
Md.
- where it was designed and built - to NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. At Goddard, New Horizons will get a full dose
of the rough, cold and airless conditions it would encounter during
launch and the planned voyage to Pluto and its moon, Charon.

"Everyone has worked very hard to get to this point," says Glen
Fountain, the New Horizons project manager at APL. "System-level tests
have gone well and we're in good shape. The team is motivated - we've
come a long way over the past year and we are ready to get into the
environmental test program."

NASA proposes to launch New Horizons in January 2006, aboard an Atlas V
rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. After launch, New
Horizons would swing through the Jupiter system in February or March
2007, getting a gravity push toward Pluto-Charon and a chance to
exercise its science instruments on the large planet. It could reach
Pluto-Charon - and begin a detailed, six-month flyby reconnaissance
study - as early as 2015.

APL manages New Horizons for NASA's Science Mission Directorate; Alan
Stern of the Southwest Research Institute's Department of Space Studies
leads the mission as principal investigator. The mission team includes
major partners in Ball Aerospace, Boeing, the Department of Energy,
KinetX, Inc., Lockheed Martin, Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Kennedy Space Center, the University of
Colorado and Stanford University.

Launch Approval Update

New Horizons' travels would take it to a new class of worlds at the
edge
of our solar system - and to a region too far from the Sun for solar
panels to work. Spacecraft designs call for a single radioisotope
thermoelectric generator (RTG) to power new Horizons' systems and
science instruments.

NASA's environmental and launch risk analyses for launching New
Horizons
with an RTG continues. The public comment period on the Draft
Environmental Impact Statement ended April 11; NASA is now working on a

Final Environmental Impact Statement, projected for release this
summer.
The agency expects to issue its National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA)
record of decision for New Horizons this fall. If NASA decides to
proceed
with launch preparation, it will then request final approval to launch
from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Check here http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/deis/intro.html for more
information on New Horizons' planned power source and the NEPA process.