Tag: New Horizons

Leaving Pluto in the dust: New Horizons probe gearing up for epic crossing of ‘termination shock’

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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July 2015. Sailing onward, the probe carried out a Jan. 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. There are scads of other icy worlds residing in the Kuiper Belt, celestial leftovers from the formation of our solar system. For New Horizons, the gathering of more exploration science is, pun intended,…

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NASA extends New Horizons mission through late 2020s

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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will be able to keep exploring its exotic environs for at least another five years. The agency announced on Friday (Sept. 29) that it will keep New Horizons‘ lights on while it’s still zooming through the Kuiper Belt, the expansive ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. “The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science…

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NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System

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3 min read NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system.  Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which can be readily obtained during an extended, low-activity mode of operations.  While the science community is not currently aware of any reachable Kuiper Belt object, this new path allows for the possibility of using the spacecraft for a future close flyby of such an object,…

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