In Orbit

Aviation Week & Space Technology   07/11/2005, page 17

Edited by Frank Morring, Jr.

Shake and Bake

NASA's New Horizons Pluto probe is on track for a January launch as it undergoes ground tests at Goddard Space Flight Center, Md., before shipment to its Florida launch site. Shown here in a Goddard clean room at the start of three months of spin, acoustic and thermal vacuum testing, the spacecraft is topped by its 2.1-meter high-gain antenna. The visible and infrared imager dubbed Ralph is the plate-like object at the right end of the probe, just below the ultraviolet imaging spectrometer named Alice. Other instruments are arrayed along the panel facing the camera, on the opposite side from the interface for the radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) that will provide power in the dim reaches of the Solar System where Pluto orbits. Pending final environmental approval, the RTG is to be installed at Kennedy Space Center this fall, for a primary launch window that runs Jan. 11-Feb. 14, 2006. A security shutdown at Los Alamos National Laboratory reduced the amount of plutonium dioxide (primarily Pu-238) fuel that could be processed for the New Horizons RTG, cutting the amount of power that would be available to 190 from 120 watts when the spacecraft reaches Pluto as early as 2015. Program officials say that should be adequate for science operations during flybys of Pluto, its moon Charon, and of a Kuiper Belt Object that will be targeted after the mission is launched.

http://www.aviationnow.com/media/images/awst_images/large/AW_07_11_2005_232_L.jpg        Credit: NASA/CHRISTOPHER GUNN