Review for New Horizon Mission to the Pluto and Kuiper Belt

Abstract

After nine years interplanetary flight, the fastest spacecraft and the first Pluto probe in the world, New Horizon spacecraft, arrived nearby to the Pluto on Jan. 15, 2015. Its distance to the Earth is about 4.7 billion kilometers. New Horizon will probe the Pluto and its satellites, and the other objects in the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is firstly discovered in 1992. It is a new world in the solar system. Since the discovery of numerous Kuiper objects, the Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006. However, it has become the shepherd object of thousands of frozen celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt. This paper reviewed the science goals and payloads aboard the spacecraft. We summarized the overall design of the New Horizon mission. The key technologies include long-term non-activation and steep, acceleration by the gravity of the Jupiter, the application of space nuclear energy. Since the cold and dark environments, the celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt remain its original state since the solar system was formed. The exploration of the Pluto system and the Kuiper belts will help to reveal the key stage of the formation of planets. It is possible for the New Horizon mission to discover the new planets in the solar system. Its achievements will improve our knowledge of whole image of the solar system.

Keywords

New Horizon / science goals / instruments / Pluto / Kuiper belts

References

[1] Jevvitt D. Discovery of the candidate Kuiper Belt object 1992 QB1[J]. Nature, 1993,362(6422):730-732.
[2] Terrile R J, Stern S A. Spacecraft missions to the Pluto and charon system, in Pluto and charon[M]//Tucson :University of Arizona Press, 1997 :103.
[3] Stern A, Spencer J. New Horizons: the first reconnaissance mission to bodies in the Kuiper Belt[J]. Earth, Moon, and Planets, 2003,92(1-4):477-482.
[4] Kusnierkiewicz D Y, Hersmana C B, Guo Y, et al. A description of the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft[J]. Acta Astronautica, 2005,57(2):135-144.
[5] Russell C. Reconnaissance of the Pluto-Charon system and the Kuiper Belt[J]. Issues, 2008,1:4.
[6] Weaver H A, Gibson W C, Tapley M B, et al. Overview of the New Horizons science payload[J]. Space Science Reviews, 2008,140(1-4):75-91.
[7] Gomes R. Kuiper Belt dynamics[M]//Scholarpedia, 2012,7(1):11034.
[8] Marcos C, Marcos R. Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the kozai mechanism: signaling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets?[J]. arXiv preprint arXiv: 1406.0715, 2014.
[9] de la Fuente Marcos C, de la Fuente Marcos R, Aarseth S J. Flipping minor bodies: what comet 96P/Machholz 1 can tell us about the orbital evolution of extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the production of near-Earth objects on retrograde orbits[J]. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2015,446(2):1867-1873.
[10] Guo Y, Farquhar R W. New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission: design and simulation of the Pluto-Charon encounter[J]. Acta Astronautica, 2005,56(3):421-429.
[11] DeBoy C C, Haskins C, Duven D, et al. The New Horizons mission to Pluto: advances in telecommunications system design[J]. Acta Astronautica, 2005,57(2-8):540-553.
[12] Kusnierkiewicz D Y, Fountain G, Guo Y, et al. The New Horizons mission to the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt[C]//Aerospace Conference, 2008 IEEE. [S.l.]: IEEE, 2008:1-10.
[13] 郑永春,欧阳自远.太阳系探测的发展趋势与科学问题分析[J].深空探测学报,2014,1(2):83-92.[Zheng Y C, Ouyang Z Y. Development trend analysis of solar system exploration and the scientific vision for future missions[J]. Journal of Deep Space Exploration, 2014,1(2):83-92.]