First ever mission to Pluto ready for launch by NASA

First ever mission to Pluto ready for launch by NASA

The farthest planet in the solar system at 4 billion miles from earth: Pluto, can start preparing for a visitor, of sorts. NASA is in its final stages of preparation to launch the fastest ever spaceship made by man on a 10 year long journey to Pluto.

The spacecraft New Horizons, will fly close to Pluto for five months, taking pictures and gathering other data about atmospheric conditions on the planet, geology of the surface, it's temperature and other data of scientific interest.

Alan Stern, New Horizon's lead scientist, expects, "the mission to be transformational. This is the capstone of the original visits to the planets. It takes us 4 billion miles away and 4 billion years back in time."

The data gathered by the mission would be significant owing to Pluto's uniqueness. It is the only known "binary planet," which is orbiting the sun in the same orbit as one of its moon, Charon, whose size is more than half the size of Pluto. Pluto also has two other moons.

NASA has made plans to launch the New Horizons from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during the 29 day window that opens on Jan 17. If the spacecraft is launched by Jan 28, it will make a sojourn of Pluto during the summer of 2015. Launching it after the window period would make it reach as late as 2020, which will be too late to study its atmosphere.

According to David Kusnierkiewicz, "Pluto is moving further away from the sun. Around 2020, the atmosphere is going to freeze and fall as snow, so we need to get there by then." Kusnierkiewicz is the mission systems engineer for New Horizons and works in the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. The next Jupiter window opens in 2007 and the cost of the New Horizons mission is expected to be in the region of US $700 million.

The Atlas V-551, which will carry New Horizons, is NASA's biggest rocket with five solid rocket boosters attached to it. Four minutes and 33 seconds into the flight, the first stage would drop away while the second would go after 42 minutes. The new Horizons will reach a speed of 28,000 and 30,000 mph when the third stage falls five minutes after the second. This will make it the fastest trip to space ever made.

The reason why the launch date becomes extremely important is the gravity assist the probe will get as it flies past Jupiter. This will accelerate the ship up to 47,000 mph making it reach Pluto faster.

Once in the vicinity of Pluto, New Horizons will begin operating seven different scientific instruments. Infact, inside 12 weeks of its reaching Pluto, New Horizon would be able to shoot pictures far better than the ones clicked by Hubble Space Telescope, improving rapidly with its approach on the planet.