As of January 2019, the power output of the RTG is about 190W.[52]. [195], The new mission began on October 22, 2015, when New Horizons carried out the first in a series of four initial targeting maneuvers designed to send it towards Arrokoth. [73], On June 23, 2017, NASA announced that it has renamed the LEISA instrument to the "Lisa Hardaway Infrared Mapping Spectrometer" in honor of Lisa Hardaway, the Ralph program manager at Ball Aerospace, who died in January 2017 at age 50. [74], The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC), built by students at the University of Colorado Boulder, is operating periodically to make dust measurements. ", "New Horizons' catches a wandering Kuiper Belt Object not far off", "New Horizons Sends Back First Science On Distant Kuiper Belt Object", "New Horizons Collects First Science on a Post-Pluto Object", "New Horizons Spies a Kuiper Belt Companion", "New Horizons Captures Record-Breaking Images in the Kuiper Belt", "HORIZONS Web-Interface, Ephemeris Type: VECTORS, Target Body: Asteroid (2012 HE85), Coordinate Origin: New Horizons Spacecraft [500@-98], Time Span: Start=2017-12-05, Stop=2017-12-06, Intervals=1", "The Diverse Shapes of Dwarf Planet and Large KBO Phase Curves Observed from New Horizons", "NASA's New Horizons Will Visit Ultima Thule on New Year's Day The probe that visited Pluto will study a mysterious icy world just after midnight. At present, not only is Voyager 1 . [75][76] It consists of a detector panel, about 460mm 300mm (18in 12in), mounted on the anti-solar face of the spacecraft (the ram direction), and an electronics box within the spacecraft. The interior structure is painted black to equalize temperature by radiative heat transfer. New Horizons was originally planned as a voyage to the only unexplored planet in the SolarSystem. New Horizons carries seven instruments: three optical instruments, two plasma instruments, a dust sensor and a radio science receiver/radiometer. New Horizons has observed the dwarf planets Eris (2020), Haumea (2007, 2017, 2020), Makemake (2007, 2017), and Quaoar (2016, 2017, 2019), as well as the large KBOs Ixion (2016), 2002 MS4 (2016, 2017, 2019), and 2014 OE394 (2017, 2018). Of all the missions we've ever launched into space, only five probes will leave the Solar System: Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons. New Horizons begins the first stages of its approach to Pluto.<br><br>NASA's New Horizons spacecraft begins the main part of its long-awaited, historic encounter with Pluto, entering the first phase of a flyby that will culminate in a close-up photo of the Pluto system in six months.<br><br>"NASA's first mission to distant Pluto will also be humanity's first mission to obtain close-ups . How do solar wind particles interact with Pluto's atmosphere? After completing its famous flyby of dwarf planet Pluto in 2015,. [156][157][needs update], On November 2, 2015, New Horizons imaged KBO 15810 Arawn with the LORRI instrument from 280millionkm away (170millionmi; 1.9AU). Effective collecting area is 0.125m2 (1.35sqft). These are small enough to fit on a single card. [182] In addition, it will continue to study the gas, dust and plasma composition of the Kuiper belt before the mission extension ends in 2021. [170] The initial estimated probabilities that these objects were reachable within New Horizons' fuel budget were 100%, 7%, and 97%, respectively. This is because New Horizons would require approximately 16 months after leaving the vicinity of Pluto to transmit the buffer load back to Earth. As of July 2022, approximately 10% of the data was still left to be received. After Visiting Pluto, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Reaches Another Cosmic Milestone. The 208.3mm (8.20in) aperture RitcheyChretien mirrors and metering structure are made of silicon carbide to boost stiffness, reduce weight and prevent warping at low temperatures. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. [146][147] The spacecraft's immediate task was to begin returning the 6.25 gigabytes of information collected. This temperature differential requires insulation and isolation from the rest of the structure. The other finalist, POSSE (Pluto and Outer Solar System Explorer), was a separate, but similar Pluto mission concept by the University of Colorado Boulder, led by principal investigator Larry W. Esposito, and supported by the JPL, Lockheed Martin and the University of California. [17] The free-space path loss at its distance of 4.5 light-hours (3,000,000,000km) is approximately 303 dB at 7GHz. Also, the mass distribution required for a spinning spacecraft demands a wider triangle. The New Horizons probe by NASA is continuing its mission to make scientific studies beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt into the outer heliosphere. The vehicle, AV-010, weighed 573,160 kilograms (1,263,600lb) at lift-off,[83] and had earlier been slightly damaged when Hurricane Wilma swept across Florida on October 24, 2005. On July 14, 2015, at 11:49UTC, it flew 12,500km (7,800mi) above the surface of Pluto,[13][14] which at the time was 34 AU from the Sun,[citation needed] making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet. A space burial company is launching the DNA of four former and late presidents into space. It was estimated that a worst-case scenario of total dispersal of on-board plutonium would spread the equivalent radiation of 80% the average annual dosage in North America from background radiation over an area with a radius of 105km (65mi). [223] The Centaur second stage did not achieve solar escape velocity, and remains in a heliocentric orbit. Mission managers estimated a one in 10,000 chance that debris could have destroyed the probe or its communication-systems during the flyby, preventing it from sending data to Earth. The dust counter is named for Venetia Burney, who first suggested the name "Pluto" at the age of 11. The Naval Observatory itself is not far from the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered. Map any additional surfaces of outermost moons: Characterize the energetic particle environment at Pluto and Charon, Refine bulk parameters (radii, masses) and orbits of Pluto and Charon, Mapping the surface geology to learn how it formed and evolved, Mapping the 3-D surface topography and surface composition to learn how it is similar to and different from comets such as, Searching for any signs of activity, such as a cloud-like coma, Searching for and studying any satellites or rings, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 06:21. ET on . Additional post launch delta-v of over 290m/s (1,000km/h; 650mph) is provided by a 77kg (170lb) internal tank. [153], On 17 April 2021, New Horizons reached a distance of 50 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, while remaining fully operational. "[26] The call eventually led to a series of proposed Pluto missions, leading up to New Horizons. After the overload was detected, the spacecraft performed as designed: it switched from the primary computer to the backup computer, entered safe mode, and sent a distress call back to Earth. Two star cameras are used to measure the spacecraft attitude. For viewing on public web sites the 12-bit per pixel LORRI images are converted to 8-bit per pixel JPEG images. The flyby increased New Horizons' speed by 4km/s (14,000km/h; 9,000mph), accelerating the probe to a velocity of 23km/s (83,000km/h; 51,000mph) relative to the Sun and shortening its voyage to Pluto by three years. The first images of Pluto from New Horizons were acquired September 2124, 2006, during a test of LORRI. The rated power is 21watts, though not all instruments operate simultaneously. So, after Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter in 1973, it still had ample power to keep going. The processor used for its flight computers is the Mongoose-V, a 12 MHz radiation-hardened version of the MIPS R3000 CPU. [117], Images from July 1 to 3, 2013, by LORRI were the first by the probe to resolve Pluto and Charon as separate objects. New Horizons has a second target", "NASA's Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission", "Hubble Telescope Spots Post-Pluto Targets for New Horizons Probe", "New Horizons HST KBO Search Results: Status Report", "Hubble to Proceed with Full Search for New Horizons Targets", "NASA's New Horizons probe is visiting Pluto and just sent back its first color photos", "Alan Stern on Pluto's Wonders, New Horizons' Lost Twin, and That Whole "Dwarf Planet" Thing", "How NASA Is Steering New Horizons Toward a Tiny Space Rock in the Kuiper Belt", "New Horizons prepares for New Year's Day 2019 Kuiper Belt Object encounter", "New Horizons Locks Onto Next Target: Let's Explore the Kuiper Belt! The Voyager 2 scan platform jammed at Saturn, and the demands of long time exposures at outer planets led to a change of plans such that the entire probe was rotated to make photos at Uranus and Neptune, similar to how New Horizons rotated. By the fall of 2014, a possible fourth target, 2014 MT69, had been eliminated by follow-up observations. [27] Funding for the mission was finally secured following the publication of the report. [81][82] The Centaur second stage ignited at 19:04:43UTC and burned for 5 minutes 25 seconds. Still, its instruments were intended for small, dim targets, so they were scientifically useful on large, distant moons. Voyager 1 and 2 . [202][203], The Core phase began a week before the encounter and continued for two days after the encounter. I flew 167 days in outer space. REX performed radiometry of the nightside. Each unit contains three solid-state gyroscopes and three accelerometers. Appointed as the project's principal investigator, Stern was described by Krimigis as "the personification of the Pluto mission". New Horizons was launched Jan. 19, 2006, on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Team leader Alan Stern stated there is potential for a third flyby in the 2020s at the outer edges of the Kuiper belt. Its primary role is to determine the relative concentrations of various elements and isotopes in Pluto's atmosphere. [208] As of November 2020, none have been found close enough to the trajectory of New Horizons for it to be able to make a close flyby with its remaining fuel. Because the flight path was determined by the Pluto flyby, and the probe only had 33 kilograms of hydrazine propellant remaining, the object to be visited needed to be within a cone of less than a degree's width extending from Pluto. [92], On April 7, 2006, the spacecraft passed the orbit of Mars, moving at roughly 21km/s (76,000km/h; 47,000mph) away from the Sun at a solar distance of 243 million kilometers.[93][94][95]. [48], Specifically, the mission's science objectives are to:[49]. New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. The rest of the triangle is primarily sandwich panels of thin aluminum face sheet (less than .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}164in or 0.40mm) bonded to aluminum honeycomb core. Interactive", "New Horizons Spacecraft Completes Flyby of Ultima Thule, the Most Distant Object Ever Visited", "NASA Spotted a Vast, Glowing 'Hydrogen Wall' at the Edge of Our Solar System", "Feature: How Alan Stern's tenacity, drive, and command got a NASA spacecraft to Pluto", American Association for the Advancement of Science, "NASA Selects Two Investigations for Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission Feasibility Studies", National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), "NEAR Shoemaker's Historic Landing on Eros Exceeds Science, Engineering Expectations", "NASA Selects Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission Phase B Study", "How Do New Horizons Costs Compare To Other Space Missions? The dust spectra can then be compared with those from observations of other stars, giving new clues as to where Earth-like planets can be found in the universe. After passing Jupiter, New Horizons spent most of its journey towards Pluto in hibernation mode. Backlighting by the Sun gave an opportunity to highlight any rings or atmospheric hazes. The spacecraft launched a little more than five years later, on Jan. 19, 2006. [57] The software of the probe runs on Nucleus RTOS operating system.[58]. Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from the Sun, more than 152 AUs away when New Horizons reached its landmark in 2021. [106] During hibernation mode, the onboard computer monitored the probe's systems and transmitted a signal back to Earth; a "green" code if everything was functioning as expected or a "red" code if mission control's assistance was needed. Close range imaging was repeated twice per day in order to search for surface changes caused by localized snow fall or surface cryovolcanism. Stern's team was finally able to start building the spacecraft and its instruments, with a planned launch in January 2006 and arrival at Pluto in 2015. [153] Voyager 1 attained greater hyperbolic excess velocity than New Horizons due to gravity assists by Jupiter and Saturn. [79][80], The probe finally lifted off from Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, directly south of Space Shuttle Launch Complex 39, at 19:00UTC on January 19, 2006. Away . [85], The probe was launched by a Lockheed Martin Atlas V 551 rocket, with a third stage added to increase the heliocentric (escape) speed. River Rhodes 10/17/22 The Thrill of Discovery The idea of exploring space is one that is relatively new, well, that is compared to how well explored the earth is and nothing significantly new has been discovered in a long while, space seemed like the place for new discoveries. Large ground telescopes with wide-field cameras, notably the twin 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes in Chile, the 8.2-meter Subaru Observatory in Hawaii and the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope[116][159] were used to search for potential targets. [5] Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern,[6] the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. Reflected sunlight from Charon allowed some imaging observations of the nightside. The heat from the RTG adds warmth to the spacecraft while it is in the outer Solar System. NewHorizons Launch Date: 2006-01-19 Launch Vehicle: Atlas V Launch Site: Cape Canaveral, United States Mass: 385 kg Personnel Selected References Stern, A., and J. Spencer, New horizons: The first reconnaissance mission mission to bodies in the Kuiper Belt, Earth, Moon, Planets, 92, 477-482, 2003. Unlike SWAP, which measures particles of up to 6.5keV, PEPSSI goes up to 1MeV. Helium is used as a pressurant, with an elastomeric diaphragm assisting expulsion. [28], The New Horizons proposal was one of five that were officially submitted to NASA. The cameras determined their positions, acting as "reverse optical navigation". PT2 was out of the running before the Pluto flyby. "[210], Images taken by the LORRI camera while New Horizons was 42 to 45 AU from the Sun were used to measure the cosmic optical background, the visible light analog of the cosmic microwave background, in seven high galactic latitude fields. In between the time of star camera readings, spacecraft orientation is provided by dual redundant miniature inertial measurement units. This "wall" was first detected in 1992 by the two Voyager spacecraft.[24][25]. [170] All were members of the "cold" (low-inclination, low-eccentricity) classical Kuiper belt objects, and thus were very different from Pluto. [24][25], The Ralph telescope, 75mm[72] in aperture, is one of two photographic instruments that make up New Horizons' Pluto Exploration Remote Sensing Investigation (PERSI), with the other being the Alice instrument. What does its surface look like? NASA Pluto Probe to Fly by Another Object in 2019", "New Horizons Encore? The "secondary objectives" were expected to be met but were not demanded. Because of the extreme distance from Pluto and the Kuiper belt, only one buffer load at those encounters can be saved. [102] Recording from different angles and illumination conditions, New Horizons took detailed images of Jupiter's faint ring system, discovering debris left over from recent collisions within the rings or from other unexplained phenomena. [66], Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) is a toroidal electrostatic analyzer and retarding potential analyzer (RPA), that makes up one of the two instruments comprising New Horizons' Plasma and high-energy particle spectrometer suite (PAM), the other being PEPSSI. Pluto's mass and mass distribution were evaluated by the gravitational tug on the spacecraft. The structure is designed to act as shielding, reducing electronics errors caused by radiation from the RTG. The necessary course adjustment was performed with four engine firings between October 22 and November 4, 2015. Previous missions had the spacecraft transmit through the atmosphere, to Earth ("downlink"). [62] At Pluto's distance, radio signals from the space probe back to Earth took four hours and 25 minutes to traverse 4.7billion km of space.[63]. NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Ed Weiler prompted Stern to lobby for the funding of New Horizons in hopes of the mission appearing in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey; a prioritized "wish list", compiled by the United States National Research Council, that reflects the opinions of the scientific community. Most of the post-Jupiter voyage was spent in hibernation mode to preserve on-board systems, except for brief annual checkouts. Because of Pluto's tilt, a portion of the northern hemisphere would be in shadow at all times. On April 17, 2021, the New Horizons spacecraft passed 50 astronomical units - 50 times Earth's distance from the sun - while speeding toward interstellar space. This antenna was used only for early mission phases near Earth, just after launch and for emergencies if the spacecraft had lost attitude control. An objective to measure any magnetic field of Pluto was dropped, due to mass and budget issues associated with including a magnetometer on the spacecraft. [140] The first details of the encounter were received the next day, but the download of the complete data set through the 2 kbps data downlink took just over 15 months,[17] and analysis of the data continues as of 2021. Each of the two systems is duplicated for redundancy, for a total of four computers. They entered orbits that took them closer to the Sun than. [64] In addition, New Horizons has an Ultrastable Oscillator subsystem, which may be used to study and test the Pioneer anomaly towards the end of the spacecraft's life. Further delays related to low cloud ceiling conditions downrange, and high winds and technical difficultiesunrelated to the rocket itselfprevented launch for a further two days. Overall, the spacecraft is thoroughly blanketed to retain heat. [133], On July 4, 2015, New Horizons experienced a software anomaly and went into safe mode, preventing the spacecraft from performing scientific observations until engineers could resolve the problem. Starting 3.2 days before the closest approach, long-range imaging included the mapping of Pluto and Charon to 40km (25mi) resolution. The probe's trajectory to Pluto passed near Neptune's trailing Lagrange point ("L5"), which may host hundreds of bodies in 1:1 resonance. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. [106] The probe was activated for about two months a year so that the instruments could be calibrated and the systems checked. Two hours later, New Horizons surpassed its own record, imaging the Kuiper belt objects 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85 from a distance of 0.50 and 0.34AU, respectively. The forward low-gain antenna is stacked atop the feed of the medium-gain antenna. [136], The timing flaw consisted of performing two tasks simultaneouslycompressing previously acquired data to release space for more data, and making a second copy of the approach command sequencethat together overloaded the spacecraft's primary computer. [211][212], The spacecraft reached a distance of 50 AUs from the Sun, almost 7.5 billion kilometers (5 billion miles) away, on 17 April 2021 at 12:42 UTC, a feat performed only four times before, by Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. Besides the low data rate, Pluto's distance also causes a latency of about 4.5hours (one-way). As the spacecraft speeds up and slows down, the radio signal exhibited a Doppler shift. ", NASAs New Horizons Reaches a Rare Space Milestone, NASA's New Horizons reaches rare distance, looks out to Voyager, "New Horizons May Make Yet Another Flyby After Ultima Thule", "New Horizons planning additional extended missions", "New Horizons: The PI's Perspective: Far from Home", "Hi, I am Alan Stern, head of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on its way to explore Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object one billion miles beyond Pluto! The RTG provided 245.7W of power at launch, and was predicted to drop approximately 3.5W every year, decaying to 202W by the time of its encounter with the Plutonian system in 2015 and will decay too far to power the transmitters in the 2030s. ", "NASA probe breaks speed records as it tops 150,000 mph on way to the Sun", "New Horizons PlutoKuiper Belt mission: design and simulation of the PlutoCharon encounter", "First Mission to Pluto: Policy, Politics, Science, and Technology in the Origins of New Horizons, 19892003", NASA Gets Some Help From Guitarist Brian May On Its New Horizons Probe, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Horizons&oldid=1141863561, Map the surface compositions of Pluto and, Characterize the geologies and morphologies of Pluto and Charon, Map surface temperatures on Pluto and Charon, Search for rings and additional satellites around Pluto, Conduct similar investigations of one or more, On March 19, 2007, the Command and Data Handling computer experienced an uncorrectable memory error and rebooted itself, causing the spacecraft to go into safe mode. Significantly, had the backup option been taken, this would have meant less fuel for later Kuiper belt operations. [186], On December 5, 2017, when New Horizons was 40.9AU from Earth, a calibration image of the Wishing Well cluster marked the most distant image ever taken by a spacecraft (breaking the 27-year record set by Voyager 1's famous Pale Blue Dot). [120] In August 2014, astronomers made high-precision measurements of Pluto's location and orbit around the Sun using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (an array of radio telescopes located in Chile) to help NASA's New Horizons spacecraft accurately home in on Pluto. It has seven instruments on board to . It will also study other objects in the Kuiper belt. The communications dish on Earth measured the disappearance and reappearance of the radio occultation signal as the probe flew by behind Pluto. After separation from the launch vehicle, overall control was taken by Mission Operations Center (MOC) at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County, Maryland. The larger thrusters are used primarily for trajectory corrections, and the small ones (previously used on Cassini and the Voyager spacecraft) are used primarily for attitude control and spinup/spindown maneuvers. The VBSDC is always turned on measuring the masses of the interplanetary and interstellar dust particles (in the range of nano- and picograms) as they collide with the PVDF panels mounted on the New Horizons spacecraft. A thirteen-minute short film about the VBSDC garnered an Emmy Award for student achievement in 2006.[77]. [218] This is because pointing a camera towards Earth could cause the camera to be damaged by sunlight,[219] as none of New Horizons' cameras have an active shutter mechanism.[220][221]. Travelling through Jupiter's magnetosphere, New Horizons collected valuable particle readings. Published Aug 3, 2022. [149], By March 30, 2016, about nine months after the flyby, New Horizons reached the halfway point of transmitting this data. Before activating the other two instruments, ground tests were conducted to make sure that the expanded data gathering in this phase of the mission would not limit available energy, memory and fuel in the future and that all systems were functioning during the flyby. [102], The flyby was the center of a four-month intensive observation campaign lasting from January to June. The engines burned for 76seconds, adjusting the spacecraft's velocity by about 1.16m/s (4.2km/h; 2.6mph). [217], New Horizons may also take a picture of Earth from its distance in the Kuiper belt, but only after completing all planned KBO flybys. Instead, SWAP and PEPSSI could indirectly detect magnetic fields around Pluto. [141], The mission's science objectives were grouped in three distinct priorities. New Horizons launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006. PT1 was eventually chosen as the target and would be named 486958 Arrokoth. The Radio Science Experiment (REX) used an ultrastable crystal oscillator (essentially a calibrated crystal in a miniature oven) and some additional electronics to conduct radio science investigations using the communications channels. [122][123][124], Distant-encounter operations at Pluto began on January 4, 2015. Pluto Probe's Team Proposes Extension", "NASA extends the New Horizons mission to fly by another small world beyond Pluto", "New Horizons conducts flyby of Pluto in historic Kuiper Belt encounter", "Citizen Scientists: Discover a New Horizons Flyby Target", "The most exciting citizen science project ever (to me, anyway)", "Hubble recruited to find New Horizons probe post-Pluto target", Hubble To Lend Pluto Probe Helping Hand in Search for Secondary Target, "RELEASE 14-281 NASA's Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission", "Finally! [119] Between July 1924, 2014, New Horizons' LORRI snapped 12 images of Charon revolving around Pluto, covering almost one full rotation at distances ranging from about 429 to 422million kilometers (267,000,000 to 262,000,000mi). NASA approved the New Horizons mission in 2001 to conduct the first flyby of the small distant planet and its large moon, Charon, and explore the Kuiper Belt of small icy objects that lay beyond. [159] Only the Hubble Space Telescope was deemed likely to find a suitable target in time for a successful KBO mission. [111] After astronomers announced the discovery of two new moons in the Pluto system, Kerberos and Styx, mission planners started contemplating the possibility of the probe running into unseen debris and dust left over from ancient collisions between the moons. This proved to be wrong as images obtained by New Horizons on July 14 and sent back to Earth in October 2015 revealed that Kerberos was smaller in size, 19km (12mi) across with a highly reflective surface suggesting the presence of relatively clean water ice similarly to the rest of Pluto's smaller moons. Weiler stated that it was a result that "[his] administration was not going to fight". New Horizons now continues on its unparalleled journey of exploration with the close flyby of a Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69 - nicknamed Ultima Thule - on January 1, 2019. The spacecraft is comparable in size and general shape to a grand piano and has been compared to a piano glued to a cocktail bar-sized satellite dish. [27] Alice Bowman became Mission Operations Manager (MOM).[32]. [99] The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2billionkm (2.6billionmi; 28AU), confirmed the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects. In August 1992, JPL scientist Robert Staehle called Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet. Data storage is done on two low-power solid-state recorders (one primary, one backup) holding up to 8gigabytes each. Coincidentally the Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station was where the photographic plates were taken for the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon. [15] In August 2016, New Horizons was reported to have traveled at speeds of more than 84,000km/h (52,000mph).