Collaborate Disseminate
The future of NASA’s New Horizons interstellar probe as it speeds out of the solar system, never to return, is a bit more secure after the space agency announced a new extended mission plan that includes another possible Kuiper Belt object flyby.Contin… Continue reading New Horizons gets a new lease on life and a possible flyby mission
In 2015 NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft provided humanity with the first up-close views of Pluto, passing just 12,472 km (7,750 mi) from the surface. What had always been little more …read more Continue reading Change of Plans for New Horizons Sparks Debate
Astronomers have detected an eerie glow of “ghost light” that could represent a previously unknown component of the solar system. Comparing data from two distinct viewpoints – Hubble and New Horizons – the researchers subtracted light from known object… Continue reading Eerie “ghost light” detected emanating from within the solar system
NASA’s New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts through vast emptiness towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance on the journey, and celebrated by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1… Continue reading New Horizons snaps photo of Voyager 1 from 11 billion miles away
How many galaxies are there in the observable universe? Not as many as we thought, according to a new study. NASA’s New Horizons probe has measured the blackness of the sky and found that there’s probably “only” a few hundred billion galaxies glowing t… Continue reading New Horizons probe finds that space is darker than we thought
NASA’s New Horizons deep-space probe has, for the first time, returned images to Earth that show stellar parallax, or how the positions of stars shift when seen from two different places. This phenomenon could one day be used for interstellar navigatio… Continue reading New Horizons becomes first spacecraft to demonstrate stellar parallax
If you think your data rates suck, take pity on New Horizons. The space probe, which gave us lovely pictures of the hapless one-time planet Pluto after its 2015 flyby, continued to plunge and explore other, smaller objects in the Kuiper belt. In January of 2019, New Horizons zipped …read more
Bit by bit, NASA’s New Horizons probe is bringing into sharper focus the most distant space object ever explored by a spacecraft. Known as Arrokoth, this ancient, icy body sits far beyond Pluto in a ring of frigid objects that form the Kuiper Belt. Sci… Continue reading Distant Kuiper Belt object reveals deep secrets of planetary formation
The popular press was recently abuzz with sad news from the planet Mars: Opportunity, the little rover that could, could do no more. It took an astonishing 15 years for it to give up the ghost, and it took a planet-wide dust storm that blotted out the sun and …read more
Continue reading Engineering for the Long Haul, the NASA Way
On the face of it, powering most spacecraft would appear to be a straightforward engineering problem. After all, with no clouds to obscure the sun, adorning a satellite with enough solar panels to supply its electrical needs seems like a no-brainer. Finding a way to support photovoltaic (PV) arrays of the proper size and making sure they’re properly oriented to maximize the amount of power harvested can be tricky, but having essentially unlimited energy streaming out from the sun greatly simplifies the overall problem.
Unfortunately, this really only holds for spacecraft operating relatively close to the sun. The tyranny of …read more
Continue reading The Deep Space Energy Crisis Could Soon Be Over