New Horizons mission
After its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons
mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the
Kuiper Belt. NASA has extended its mission to go further into the Kuiper Belt
to explore an ancient object, which is a remnant from the time when the planets
in our Solar System first formed. The Kuiper Belt Object, the spacecraft is now
heading for, is provisionally called 2014 MU69.
About New Horizons Mission:
New Horizons was launched on 19 January 2006, and has been
travelling through space for the past nine years.
- Just over a year after launch, it passed Jupiter and used the giant world’s gravity to boost its velocity, as well as making scientific observations. This boost shortened the time to reach Pluto by years.
- In July 2015, New Horizons flew 12,500km above the dwarf planet’s icy surface, becoming the first spacecraft to explore Pluto.
- New Horizon’s core science mission is to map the surfaces of Pluto and Charon, to study Pluto’s atmosphere and to take temperature readings.
- The spacecraft was launched in 2006, before the big debate started over Pluto’s status as a planet. In August of that same year, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet.
Kuiper belt is a region of the solar system beyond the planets,
extending from the orbit of Neptune. It consist mainly small bodies or remnants
from the solar system’s formation.
