[meteorite-list] NASA's New Horizons Completes Record-Setting Kuiper Belt Targeting Maneuvers

[Ron Baalke]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151105

NASA's New Horizons Completes Record-Setting Kuiper Belt Targeting Maneuvers
November 5, 2015

[Graphic]
Path to a KBO: Projected route of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft toward 
2014 MU69, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt about 1 billion miles beyond 
Pluto. Planets are shown in their positions on Jan. 1, 2019, when New 
Horizons is projected to reach the small Kuiper Belt object. NASA must 
approve an extended mission for New Horizons to study the ancient KBO.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has successfully performed the last in 
a series of four targeting maneuvers that set it on course for a January 
2019 encounter with 2014 MU69. This ancient body in the Kuiper Belt is 
more than a billion miles beyond Pluto; New Horizons will explore it if 
NASA approves an extended mission.

The four propulsive maneuvers were the most distant trajectory corrections 
ever performed by any spacecraft. The fourth maneuver, programmed into 
the spacecraft's computers and executed with New Horizons' hydrazine-fueled 
thrusters, started at approximately 1:15 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 
and lasted just under 20 minutes. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins 
University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, began 
receiving data through NASA's Deep Space Network just before 7 p.m. EST 
on Wednesday indicating the final targeting maneuver went as planned.

The maneuvers didn't speed or slow the spacecraft as much as they "pushed" 
New Horizons sideways, giving it a 57 meter per second (128 mile per hour) 
nudge toward the KBO. That's enough to make New Horizons intercept MU69 
in just over three years.

"This is another milestone in the life of an already successful mission 
that's returning exciting new data every day," said Curt Niebur, New Horizons 
program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These course adjustments 
preserve the option of studying an even more distant object in the future, 
as New Horizons continues its remarkable journey."

The New Horizons team will submit a formal proposal to NASA for the extended 
mission to 2014 MU69 in early 2016. The science team hopes to explore 
even closer to MU69 than New Horizons came to Pluto on July 14, which 
was approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers).

"New Horizons is healthy and now on course to make the first exploration 
of a building block of small planets like Pluto, and we're excited to 
propose its exploration to NASA,"said New Horizons Principal Investigator 
Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Getting the data: Following the last in a series of four maneuvers targeting 
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft toward Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, flight 
controller George Lawrence monitors spacecraft data as it streams into 
the New Horizons Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University 
Applied Physics Laboratory on Nov. 4, 2015.
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest 
Research Institute)

The KBO targeting maneuvers were the mission's largest and longest, and 
carried out in a succession faster than any sequence of previous New Horizons 
engine burns. They were also incredibly accurate, performing almost exactly 
as they were designed and setting New Horizons on the course mission designers 
predicted. "The performance of each maneuver was spot on," said APL's 
Gabe Rogers, New Horizons spacecraft systems engineer and guidance and 
control lead.

The first three maneuvers were carried out on Oct. 22, 25 and 28. At the 
time of yesterday's maneuver, New Horizons, speeding toward deeper space 
at more than 32,000 miles per hour, was approximately 84 million miles 
(135 million kilometers) beyond Pluto and nearly 3.2 billion miles (about 
5.1 billion kilometers) from Earth. The spacecraft is currently 895 million 
miles (1.44 billion kilometers) from MU69. All systems remain healthy 
and the spacecraft continues to transmit data stored on its digital recorders 
from its flight through the Pluto system in July.

New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency's 
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built, 
and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's 
Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute leads the 
science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.