Interplanetary station New Horizons. Dossier. New Horizons mission New interplanetary station

Description of the project

The New Horizons project is a NASA mission to explore Pluto and its satellites behind the satellite, launched on June 19, 2006. The mission is partly supported by the New Frontiers program. To recover the additional acceleration of the apparatus, a gravitational maneuver was carried out near the gravitational field of Jupiter in 2007 and the birth of Pluto in 2015. Unfortunately, exit to Pluto's orbit without overdoing it. At that hour, AMC gained too much momentum. After passing near Pluto, the AMS continued its journey near the Kuiper Belt. Robot "New Horizons" station insured for 15 - 17 years.

Pluto was discovered on the 18th of 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh at an observatory in Flagstaff. Until 2006, it was considered the ninth planet of the Sonja system, until the International Astronomical Union “changed” it to a dwarf planet. The reason for this was a whole series of critical objects of the Kuiper belt, which may not compromise, or even overturn it behind the scenes.

Outskirts of the Earth station "New Horizons" Having left the highest speed among all spacecraft that had been operating before, with the engines running, it became 16.26 kilometers per second near the Earth. The heliocentric velocity became 45 kilometers per second, which would prevent the gravitational maneuver of Jupiter from acting. Until 2015, the heliocentric velocity of the apparatus dropped to 14.5 kilometers per second, while the velocity of Voyager 1, which successfully subdued the heavy Sun, became 17.012 kilometers per second (to achieve such a high velocity and the apparatus for the development of additional gravitational mana).

Goals missions New Horizons

Golovne zavdanya mіsії – follow the molding systems of Pluto and Charon, Kuiper belts, processes that accompanied the early evolution of the Sonya system New Horizons Space Station must investigate the surface and atmosphere of objects Pluto system. The mission has been expanded to include similar investigations into Kuiper belt objects.

Until the day of the mission:

• Mapping the surface of Pluto and Charon
• Investigation of the geology and morphology of Pluto and Charon
• Exploring Pluto's atmosphere and extending it into wider space
• Feel the atmosphere at Charon's
• Pobudov surface temperature maps of Pluto and Charon
• Look for the ring and new satellites of Pluto
• Tracking Kuiper Belt Objects

Installation of the device Novi Horizonti

1 - RITEG, 2 - narrowly straight antenna, 3 - wide straight antenna, 4 - all straight antenna, 5 - correction motors, 6 - mirror sensors, A - Alice, R - Ralph, L - LORRI, S - SWAP, P - PEPSSI, X - REX, D – VB-SDC.

1 - RITEG; 2 - blinds of the thermal regime protection system; 3 - correction sliders; 4 - all-straight antenna; , D – VB-SDC.

The weight of the apparatus is 478 kg, including 77 kg of paliwa. Dimensions – 2.2×2.7×3.2 meters.

The launch was carried out on the back of the American Atlas-5 rocket in the 551 configuration, using the Russian RD-180 engine, the most important variant of this rocket, which was stalled in 2012. Otherwise it would be more important to speed up the device.

Telemetry and control

To link the AMC, the vicorist uses 4 X-band antennas: narrowly direct with a high gain ratio, broadly directed with a medium gain ratio, and two omnidirectional antennas. On Earth, to exchange data, antennas of a distant cosmic connection are being used, which have a diameter of 70 meters and have already been installed in projects far from the orbit of Jupiter. The all-directional antennas were installed only at the early stages of the AMS flight in the near-terrestrial space and to help in case of an emergency (for example, in case of loss of orientation).

When controlled by the transmission device, it is possible to increase the speed of transmission to Earth; this method of transmission has been successfully tested on the beginning of the mission and is now considered to be a working option.

When designing the connection system, most of the important nodes were duplicated, so that when the main device went out of order, its function was taken from spare. Near Jupiter, the system sent data to Earth at a speed of 38 kilobits per second (4.75 kB/s), a speed equal to that of an old dial-up modem. The device transmits information about the Pluto system at a speed of 768 bits per second (96 bytes per second); It takes approximately three years to transfer one megabyte. Although this fluidity is very small, it allows you to send invaluable scientific data to Earth and send photographs of high quality. The cream of low fluidity, the foldability of the work with the ligament system contributes to the compression of the signal, which becomes almost half a year in the skin direction.

Take your money and save it in the savings of your on-board computer. This is due to the often high speed of information availability, which significantly outweighs the transmission capacity, and also because to change the station mass, install the connection equipment directly on the AMC housing and for the purpose of targeting Or turn the whole device.

Energy security

The energy source is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTEG). At the beginning of the mission, the pressure became 250 Watts, while the skin pressure changed by 5 hundredths, which would ensure a voltage of 200 Watts when the main stage of the mission ended - the spill in the Pluto system. This significantly compromises the power of the RITEGs installed on the Voyagers (470 Watts at launch, 290 Watts at launch in 2006). This explains the triviality of the project, which may end in the 2020s, if the AMS flies past 50 - 55 astronomical units.

The basis of the food system was the RITEGU “GPHS-RTG” model, already tested in other missions (“Ulysses”, “Galileo”). The generator holds approximately 11 kilograms of fuel and contains 72 capsules of plutonium-238 oxide. The skin capsule is molded into a power body with iridium, on top of which there is a shell made of graphite.

This isotope is subject to high thermal radiation per unit mass, as well as radioactive decay, which passes through the suppression of alpha frequencies, which allows the vicorization of very light radiation protection. This isotope can be extracted only when plutonium is depleted from waste, through production both in the USA and in Russia, and in order to obtain it because it is extremely scarce and expensive.

Problems with financing and delays in production led to the fact that the generator, having lost less effort, was not planned, which led to a revision of the monitoring programs. The mass of plutonium in RITEG NewHorizons is approximately three times less than that in the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Computing complex of the station

The computational complex of AMS represents two systems - a system for processing commands and data and a navigation and control system. The skin is doubled, the entire computational complex consists of several computers. The skin is based on a processor Mongoose-V(Radiation-resistant version of the R3000 processor) with MIPS architecture, which operates at a frequency of 12 megahertz. The same with the RAD750 processor, which is used in the world, is less productive and runs at a lower frequency (12 versus 200 megahertz), but its performance is much less. To save deleted information, use two banks of flash memory (main and spare) with a capacity of 8 gigabytes.

Computer payments are equipped with special modules that maintain the required temperature conditions; It also houses the electronic components of the devices and controls.

On January 19, 2007, as a result of a failure, the computer was re-enabled and switched to the protected robot mode. To fully update the efficiency, two additions were needed, but part of the collected data about the magnetosphere of Jupiter was wasted. This idea did not affect the main mission of AMC.

Orientation and stabilization

The fragments of the on-board AMC energy core do not have the required tension for stabilization of the additional flywheels, the orientation and stabilization of the device is determined by the correct steering installation, fell For this purpose, methylhydrazine is used. The New Horizons firing tank can hold up to 90 kilograms of methylhydrazine, but it contains more than 77 kilograms, which is enough to give the device an additional speed of 290 meters per second.

• AMS New Horizons captured images of Europe after its closest approach to Jupiter

• 1Jupiter and yogo satellite Yo. Photo taken by AMC New Horizons for 2007.

• Combinations of images from the Earth's Earth Observatory on Jupiter, New Horizons and the Chandra X-ray Observatory

• Images of the Lesser Sun in Jupiter's atmosphere as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons.

Safe thermal conditions

The temperature in the middle of the AMC ranges from 10 to 30 °C. When the cob was watered on a machine, prepared until the end of the day, the temperature was anywhere near 40 °C. The minimum permissible temperature is 0 °C, which is determined by the freezing point of hydrazine.

The temperature regime lies in the balance of electrical life, heat, which is seen by the RTEG, heat seen through thermal insulation and external elements of the station.

To maintain the temperature regime, the device is covered with lightweight rich-spherical thermal insulation, which removes heat, which appears to be working electronics.

Adjusted, installed on AMC

AMS "Novi Horizonti" is equipped with the following devices:

• ultraviolet spectrometer Alice to study the atmosphere and surface structure of Pluto. There was a lot of disintegration at the Pivdenno-Zakhidny Pre-Slednytsky Institute. This same device was created for the Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency;
• a Ralph observation camera that works in the visible and infrared ranges;
• camera LORRI (Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager) with a separate 5 microradian, suitable for detailed shooting and shooting from a large distance. The camera is divided into APL;
• We determine the parameters of the particles of the solar wind SWAP (Solar Wind Analyzer for Pluto), developed at the Pivdenno-Zakhidny Research Institute. This will help to establish the presence of a magnetosphere on Pluto, and will help to determine the fluidity of the atmosphere;
• energy particle spectrometer PEPSSI (Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation). I will arrange the search for neutral atoms to come from the atmosphere of Pluto and hold a charge in the sleepy wind;
• saw detector VB-SDC (Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter) to determine the concentration of saw particles near the Kuiper belt;
• radio spectrometer REX (English Radio EXperiment), integrated with the main antenna of the AMS. Its task is the modification of the structure of the atmosphere of Pluto, the thermal power of its surface and the extinction of the mass of Pluto, Charon and other objects of the Kuiper belt).

> Chronology

Rocket-nose: Atlas V 551 first stage; Centaur is another stage; STAR 48B third stage

Roztashuvannya: Miss Canaveral, Florida.

Trajectory: To Pluto for the additional gravity of Jupiter

Way

The beginning of the journey: The first 13 months - the strengthening of the spacecraft and the inclusion of devices, calibration, a slight correction of the trajectory through additional maneuvers and a rehearsal of the connection with Jupiter. New horizons passed the orbit of Mars on the 7th quarter of 2006; It also included a small asteroid, named later than APL, in early 2006.

Jupiter: The closest approach was on February 28, 2007 at a speed of 51,000 miles per year (about 23 kilometers per second). New flight horizons are 3-4 times closer to Jupiter, the lower spacecraft Cassini, which is located within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) across the great size of the planet.

Interplanetary cruise: during the hour of approximately the 8-mile journey to Pluto, all the devices of the spacecraft were turned on and tested, the trajectory of the course was adjusted and rehearsed for the flight from the distant planet.

During the course of our cruise, New Horizons also visited the orbits of Saturn (8 September 2008), Uranus (18 February 2011) and Neptune (25 September 2014).

Pluto system

At the beginning of 2015, New Horizons began the first of many stages of landing approach, which will end with the first great approach of Pluto on June 14, 2015. At its closest approach, the ship will fly at an distance of approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) from Pluto and 17,900 miles (28,800 km) from Charon.

Beyond Pluto: Kuiper Belt

The spacecraft has the ability to fly beyond the boundaries of the Pluto system and monitor new Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). You are carrying additional hydrazine to flow to the OPC; The communication system for the device is designed to work far beyond the orbit of Pluto, and scientific devices can function in the minds of the world, below the dark, dreamy light of Pluto.

Thus, the Nova Horizon team had the opportunity to carry out a special search for small bodies in the OBE system that the ship could reach. By the beginning of the 2000s, no Kuiper Belt rocks had been discovered. The National Academy of Sciences is to direct New Horizons to fly to small OPKs of 20 to 50 kilometers (about 12 to 30 miles) in diameter, which is larger than all, primitive and less informative, lower planets such as Pluto.

In 2014, scientists, the Vikorist Hubble Space Telescope, and members of the New Horizons scientific team discovered three objects within the OPC - all 20-55 kilometers across. Possible dates for its release are, for example, 2018 and 2019 at a distance of billions of miles from Pluto.

In the summer of 2015, following the fall of Pluto, the New Horizons team is working with NASA to select the best candidate among the three. In the spring of 2015, operators are expected to start the engines on board the New Horizon at the optimal time in order to minimize the heat required to reach the target and begin the journey.

All NASA is trying to do more, not just to explore its main goals, so it has sent a message about financing the expanded mission. Proposition vivchiti dodatkovo OPK hang in 2016; It will be assessed by an independent group of experts in order to know about all the achievements of such a process: the team analyzing the health of the spacecraft and its instruments, contributions for science, which can be developed in the military-industrial complex of the Novy Horizonti apparatus, the quality of the field and the information The day of the target point in the Kuiper Belt, and a lot other.

If NASA confirms such a deadline, New Horizons will launch a new mission in 2017, and its team will be given an hour to plan this task, which will happen one or two years later.

It was launched in 2006 for Doslіzhennya (Yaka entered the screenshot, and Nini to wear the "ring" of the dwarf) planet of the Sonya Systems Pluto Mixi "Hight Viconal INAVZHDIDIA WIDALALATELAS. What are the results of the surveillance conducted by the automatic interplanetary station?
For many years now, astronomers have been impatiently waiting for the spacecraft with Pluto, since the work of human hands has never been seen before. Data about the planet, named after the god of the underworld of the dead, which roamed the ancient Romans, was previously available to astrophysicists - these materials were taken from ground-based telescopes, as well as from an orbital telescope.

After the device passes over the surface of Pluto, the device’s memory saves a large amount of information captured as a result of scanning the planet. Due to the fact that New Horizons is no longer distant from the Earth, the speed of data transmission is already limited. And the station is more distant by 40 (one astronomical unit - i.e. the distance from the Earth to the Sun is 150 million kilometers). Therefore, information from the memory disks of the last mission was transferred to the Earth only about 1000 years ago.

As it was getting cold, Pluto idly plunged into the ice and frozen gases with a dead piece of material. Space investigations have shown that this is not a bad thing. On the surface of the dwarf planet with the surface of its natural satellite Charon (among the ancient Romans, Charon is a vessel that transports the souls of dead people to the kingdom of shadows through the sacred river Styx), one cannot help but note various aspects. Among them is an extremely small number of meteorite craters on Pluto aligned with its satellite.
There is only one explanation - the surface of the planetoid is gradually renewed as a result of processes similar to those at the core. All planets of the solar system, which have a mass sufficient for hydrostatic regulation, undergo similar processes.
On Earth it looks like this: tectonic plates of solid rock “float” on the surface of the molten mantle. These plates are expanding, changing, sticking together, screaming earthquakes, erupting volcanoes. On Pluto, tectonic plates are folded from water ice, as well as frozen gases, and rest on a substance made of the same material, which is flattened as water, under the pressure of the upper balls.
Across the entire surface of Pluto, there are the results of tectonics: the Krizhany Hir massifs and ridges, smooth plains with recently frozen gases and ridges, as well as cryovolcanoes. The appearance of earthly volcanoes is caused by the fact that water vapor and other gases erupt from them, and the same substances flow down the slopes in a rare form.

Ice warehouse that atmosphere of Pluto

As space research has shown, water and nitrogen ice dominate the surface of Pluto. The division of the two components on the surface of the planet is uneven, and this may be the key to understanding tectonic processes. In addition, the plains are covered with a ball of tolins - polymerized simplest carbohydrates. These words are created from the output of methane and ethane under the influx of ultraviolet changes, designed to serve the Sun.
Behind the physical minds of the deep cosmos, the shingles crystallize, their masses stain a yellow-brown color. The very surface of Pluto itself, due to its chemical deposition, contains little bits of it, apparently because of the barbaric state.
And the axis of the planetoid’s atmosphere has weakened. They were hoping to discover a more powerful and intense atmosphere, as revealed by the automatic interplanetary station. The pressure of the atmosphere on the surface is more than one hundred thousandth that of the earth. Apparently, Pluto’s orbit is strongly inverted, and may reach a significant eccentricity: at perihelion the planet is at least two (!) times closer to the Sun at its apogee, and the light at the point closest to the sun is at least three times greater .

Such a feature is likely to lead to significant changes in the strength of the atmosphere due to the hour of Plutonian doom. In order to verify this hypothesis in the near future, there will be no way to be careful, since the period of the birth of Pluto near the Sun will become 248 earthly rocks.
The atmosphere is formed mainly of nitrogen, with small amounts of methane also appearing along with carbon monoxide. The solids are quickly created on their own in the atmosphere, then, condensing, they fall into a thin ball on the surface. And before that, they are staying at the famous camp, creating something similar to the gloom that was revealed by the spacecraft.

Satellites

Pluto's first bright satellite Charon. In the past eighty years. Charon is the largest natural satellite of the planetoid and the only one that has mass sufficient for hydrostatic flow. It’s important that the ratio of the mass of the planet and the satellite becomes 1 to 8. The mass of the satellite is even greater in relation to the mass of the mother planet. Through the chain, Pluto - Charon was sometimes called a subsurface planet.
Flyover of Charon

The surface of Charon is covered mainly with water ice, which provides evidence of the geological activity of the celestial body surrounding the cryovolcano. It’s true, she’s much weaker, lower on Pluto.

Other satellites of the planetoid are Styx, Nikta, Kerberus (Cerberus) and Hydra. These are pieces of irregularly shaped rock measuring less than a hundred kilometers.

What horizons are “beyond the scope”

Having left the Pluto system, the automatic interplanetary station will continue to move away from the Sun at a speed of about 15 kilometers per second. It is planned that on the night of June 31, 2018 to June 1, 2019, the device will check for a “new star” near the Kuiper belt with one of its classic representatives - the small asteroid 2014MU-69. Then the transfer of the removed data will be completed and in the 20th century of the current thousand years the mission will be completed.

“New Horizons” is a NASA spacecraft launched as part of the “New Frontiers” program and intended to explore Pluto and its second satellite Charon. “New Horizons” was the first in history to convey the color images of the dwarf planet and the first to engage in research and development. Around the Earth, the device is deprived of the greatest fluidity among other devices. The device was launched in 2006 and in about ten years, until the summer of 2015, it will reach Pluto. Our mission is insured until 2026.

At the beginning of 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by as the most distant object that people have seen - . Finally, today’s investigators showed a clear understanding that everyone had the impression that it was shaped like a dumbbell. It turned out that it was a mildew - new photos showed that the object has a flattened shape, and one of the parts is much thinner than the other.

Regardless of the fact that the device is located at a distance of 160 million kilometers from its home planet - the dwarf planet Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) with a diameter of 15-20 kilometers - interplanetary automatic station I “” gave the first photograph of the object to be noted. The image of the dwarf planet was captured using the telescopic camera Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) 16 installed on the device and published by the Aerospace Agency

And they reported on the success of the historic passage of Pluto. Of course, after this device has been following its system for another ten hours, every day you will be miles away from the mark, and you will soon be able to stand in front of it in such a way. It is not possible to collect new original information. What will happen next with New Horizons?

Well, the device is now checking out the trivial period of transferring the collected data to the Earth. Retransmission of basic information will begin in the spring of 2015 and will last until the end of 2016, so it is not surprising that the speed of data transmission will be less than 1 kbit/s. Tim no less, before the end of 2016, absolutely all data collected by the device will be transferred to Earth, so there is information about those who are working after this.

Another critically important resource of the mission is energy. It vibrates a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). The New Horizons tag contains approximately 11 kilograms of Plutonium-238, which, when disintegrated, produces heat, which is then converted into electricity. At the time of the start of Mission 2006, the “New Horizons” reactor generated close to 250 W; After nearly a decade, this figure dropped to approximately 200 W. Unfortunately, the New Horizons power plant is noticeably weaker than what is being tested on Voyagers and Cassina. As they say, it’s absolutely clear that the “New Horizons” tag is the reserve that was lost from the Cassini mission (there are three such generators on board the device that is tracking Saturn, so you can estimate the difference). It is transferred that the energy of “New Horizons” will last until approximately 2026, maximum 2030, after which, through the meltdown of Plutonium-238 and the gradual degradation of the thermocouple, which is generated, the thickness of the plate, the It is no longer possible to maintain connections from the Earth.

Coming from this boundary, it is impossible to direct the apparatus to any great body in the Kuiper belt - Erida, Makemake and Haumea, which must be located far from the sector accessible to “New Horizons”. However, as you know, the Kuiper belt is not composed only of dwarf planets - it has a large number of other objects that would also be suitable for exploration. In the hour of preparation for the mission, the designers came to the conclusion that there would be one similar object that would be needed in our Lyakh "New Horizons" on the road is no more than 55 a. . from the Sun (if it is too far away, the speed of data transmission from such a distance will need to be small in order to relay information to Earth before the device’s plutonium battery runs out).

However, until the hour of dawn, astronomers were not able to identify any clear targets. After the Hubble telescope's flight last year, five potential candidates for the visit were identified, which resulted in the loss of two objects, including 2014 PN 70 (more than PT3) and 2014MU 69 (more than PT1 ).

2014 PN 70 has a diameter of 35 to 120 kilometers. In the first place, in order to reach him, the device needs to absorb approximately 75% of the hydrazine that is lost from him. Whose breed will be born before 2014, the rock PN 70 will be in the red 2019 rock, if the 2014 rock PN 70 will be on the rise 44 a. under the sun.

2014 MU 69 has a diameter of 30 to 90 kilometers. Preferably, in order to reach your device, it is necessary to absorb approximately 35% of hydrazine, which is lost from your device. If the decision is made to fly to a new one, then “New Horizons” will reach the 2014 date MU 69 at the same time in 2019, if the object is located at the station 43.4 a.o. under the sun.

Unfortunately, the device does not have the ability to offend objects, so the Mission's crew will have to choose which one to fly to. From a scientific point of view, 2014 PN 70 looks more promising, due to the fact that it is larger than 2014 MU 69 (unfortunately, their exact dimensions are impossible to determine due to their small size and great distance from the Sun) and therefore tsikavishe. However, as soon as we fly to the next one, “New Horizons” will wipe out all the bedrooms that it has lost, and this object will become almost a hundred hundred years old and will remain dependent on them.

2014 MU 69 is smaller, but its reach is less than a third of the obvious fire, which makes it impossible to theoretically send the device to another Kuiper Belt object. However, his confidence is not very great. First of all, the best way to find out what's next for New Horizons is to use Hubble, in the face of the new great investment of the hour. The remainder of the pre-Hubble service missions will no longer be available, and sooner or later they will go out of order, and care will become an increasingly valuable resource that cannot be easily discarded. Otherwise, the “New Horizons” will have even less fire, and the goal is to stay at a relatively small stage in order to reach it before the apparatus stops generating the necessary amount of energy.

Podsumkov’s decision about where to fly “New Horizons” will be praised by the scythe, and the course correction maneuver itself will be expected at the fall of the leaves in 2015. It’s very easy to guess that the mission will also need to cut off funding for its continuation, but I guess there won’t be any problems with it: that’s not why the stench overpowered the device so far away and wasted many of the Hubble orbits in search of new ones The goal is to keep everything organized at the end of the day . So we will soon have to find out which of the two Kuiper Belt objects will be selected for further conversion.