Tag: NASA New Horizons
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Queen’s rock-star astrophysicist Brian May debuts his space anthem for a far-out trip
Brian May, who is the lead guitarist for the rock group Queen as well as a Ph.D. astrophysicist, shows off his New Horizons mission patch during a Q&A with journalists. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) LAUREL, Md. — After you’ve participated in NASA’s New Horizons mission to the edge of the solar system, and written…
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Watch New Horizons probe ring in the New Year with record-setting Ultima Thule flyby
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, stands alongside a scale model of the New Horizons spacecraft after a briefing on the Ultima Thule flyby. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) LAUREL, Md. — The sleeping bags are rolled out and the videos are cued up for a New Year’s…
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Year in Space: From the Falcon Heavy’s first flight to the solar system’s last frontier
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket clears the tower in February 2018. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Launches, launches, launches! 2018 was a big year for liftoffs, particularly for SpaceX and its billionaire CEO, Elon Musk. The past year also saw a number of notable trips to interplanetary destinations, including the Martian surface and two asteroids. What’s…
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12 years after launch, New Horizons probe zeroes in on mysterious Ultima Thule
Artwork shows NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft silhouetted by the sun during its New Year’s Day encounter with an icy object, or objects, known as Ultima Thule. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Illustration / Steve Gribben) Act Two of the 12-year-old New Horizons mission to Pluto and the solar system’s icy Kuiper Belt is heating up, with…
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NASA’s New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spot their deep-space targets
The picture on the left was created by adding 48 different exposures from the LORRI camera on NASA’s New Horizons probe. The picture on the right has been processed to subtract the light from background stars, leaving an icy object known as Ultima Thule shining dimly in the crosshairs. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo)…
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NASA’s New Horizons probe wakes up from its robotic slumber for post-Pluto flyby
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s New Horizons probe silhouetted by the sun, with the Kuiper Belt object known as Ultima Thule or 2014 MU69 dominating the scene. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Steve Gribben) The mission operations team for NASA’s New Horizons probe has awakened the spacecraft from its robotic hibernation, and now it’ll…
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Planetary scientists suggest that Pluto was put together from a billion comets
These maps, assembled using data from the Ralph spectral imager on NASA’s New Horizons probe, shows the relative concentration of four chemicals on Pluto’s surface. Methane is shown in purple, nitrogen in yellow, carbon monoxide in green, and water ice in blue. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Images) Did Pluto form like its closer-in brethren…
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Pluto’s champion recounts first mission to icy world – and gears up for the next one
The 1991 stamp that served as the rallying cry for the New Horizons mission to Pluto is “updated” by members of the New Horizons science team on July 14, 2015, the day the spacecraft flew past Pluto. Principal investigator Alan Stern is at far left. (Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA) It took nine years for…
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Scientists give nickname to New Horizons probe’s post-Pluto target: Ultima Thule
News Brief: Nearly three years after flying past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is heading for a target more than 4 billion miles from Earth. It’s officially known as 2014 MU69, but now the New Horizons team has decided to call it Ultima Thule (“UL-ti-ma THOO-lee”), or Ultima for short. Ultima Thule is a Latin…
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3.8 billion miles! New Horizons spacecraft sends pictures from farthest vantage point
These false-color images of two Kuiper Belt objects, 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85 (right), helped give New Horizons’ LORRI instrument the title of farthest-out working camera. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo) Two and a half years after becoming the first probe to study Pluto up close, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is gaining more…