New Horizons Spacecraft On Its Way To New Mission
Hey Space Placers! NASA's New Horizons spacecraft that completed its historic flyby of Pluto last July, is on its way to a billion mile voyage to a new mission - to explore for the first time ever a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). Artist's Concept of a KBO & New Horizons Flyby Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben From the 10/22/15 news release: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has carried out the first in a series of four initial targeting maneuvers designed to send it toward 2014 MU69 -- a small Kuiper Belt object about a billion miles beyond Pluto, which the spacecraft historically explored in July. The maneuver, which started at approximately 1:50 p.m. EDT on Oct. 22, used two of the spacecraft’s small hydrazine-fueled thrusters, lasted approximately 16 minutes and changed the spacecraft’s trajectory by about 10 meters per second. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics ...