ron
September 8th 09, 10:44 PM
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20090908.php
New Horizons Hits Halfway Mark Between Saturn, Uranus Orbits
September 8, 2009
New Horizons sails silently today through another milestone on the way
to its historic reconnaissance of the Pluto system, reaching the
halfway
point between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.
The NASA spacecraft will reach 14.41 astronomical units from the Sun
-
1.34 billion miles, or nearly 14½ times the distance between the Earth
and Sun - between 6-7 p.m. EDT "Only five operating spacecraft have
ever
journeyed this far, and only one - the storied Voyager 2 mission -
still
had an encounter planned even farther out," says New Horizons
Principal
Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "New
Horizons is on its way to the farthest planetary encounter ever, at
just
over 32 astronomical units, which is a quarter-billion miles beyond
the
current planetary encounter record set at Neptune back in 1989."
Not that the spacecraft "sensed" today's moment; New Horizons entered
hibernation on Aug. 27 after its annual checkout and won't be stirred
again by the mission operations team until Nov. 9. New Horizons,
launched more than 3½ years ago on Jan. 19, 2006, is approximately 1.3
billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers) from Earth, speeding away from
the Sun at just over 37,000 miles per hour. The spacecraft will
actually
cross the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011.
Follow New Horizons' journey at
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php.
New Horizons Hits Halfway Mark Between Saturn, Uranus Orbits
September 8, 2009
New Horizons sails silently today through another milestone on the way
to its historic reconnaissance of the Pluto system, reaching the
halfway
point between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.
The NASA spacecraft will reach 14.41 astronomical units from the Sun
-
1.34 billion miles, or nearly 14½ times the distance between the Earth
and Sun - between 6-7 p.m. EDT "Only five operating spacecraft have
ever
journeyed this far, and only one - the storied Voyager 2 mission -
still
had an encounter planned even farther out," says New Horizons
Principal
Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "New
Horizons is on its way to the farthest planetary encounter ever, at
just
over 32 astronomical units, which is a quarter-billion miles beyond
the
current planetary encounter record set at Neptune back in 1989."
Not that the spacecraft "sensed" today's moment; New Horizons entered
hibernation on Aug. 27 after its annual checkout and won't be stirred
again by the mission operations team until Nov. 9. New Horizons,
launched more than 3½ years ago on Jan. 19, 2006, is approximately 1.3
billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers) from Earth, speeding away from
the Sun at just over 37,000 miles per hour. The spacecraft will
actually
cross the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011.
Follow New Horizons' journey at
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php.