horizons

New Horizons Brings Wealth of Discoveries to Light

New Horizons proved an outstanding discovery vehicle despite its modest nature, yielding many fascinating findings about Pluto and its moons: Alice was used to study Pluto’s atmosphere while LORRI captured images of its surface as well as three smaller moons named Styx, Nix, and Kerberos. Now, scientists from New Horizons team and beyond are opening […]

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New Horizons Explores Pluto and Its Moons

Pluto and its moons hold many secrets that New Horizons discovered through Alice – its sensitive ultraviolet imaging spectrometer. Instruments have detected an atmospheric haze which could contain methane. Pluto Underground team has created a unique spacecraft designed to investigate this mystery. The Mission As New Horizons will pass Pluto this Wednesday, astronomers will finally

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New Horizons Attitude Control System

New Horizons is equipped with a multilayered thermal insulation system to retain heat produced by its operating electronics, keeping its shape and remaining precisely aligned for gathering data through instruments, communicating with Earth or maneuvering through space. Small hydrazine thrusters reorient the spacecraft 100 times every second, while star trackers and an inertial measurement unit

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New Horizons Spacecraft Reaches Pluto For First Close-Up Images of the Distant World

Stern and his team struggled for years to launch their mission, facing an intense race against time: only four years were available for designing, launching and reaching Jupiter for gravity assistance. New Horizons would likely make its first encounter with Pluto and Charon during its trek through the Kuiper Belt – an outer region of

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