Kuiper Belt – Page 3 – Spaceflight Now

Plot thickens as New Horizons moves within year of next flyby

January 6, 2018 Stephen Clark

The final days before NASA’s New Horizons probe barrels in on its next destination on Jan. 1, 2019, should prove eventful, with scientists trying to sort out whether a distant mini-world detected by the Hubble Space Telescope more than three years ago may actually be a swarm of icy objects.

Scientists firm up flyby plan for New Horizons’s next destination

September 21, 2017 Stephen Clark

Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object ever visited, just after midnight Jan. 1, 2019, on the U.S. East Coast. Scientists now say the probe may be able to pursue another destination some time in the 2020s.

New Horizons’ next target might be a binary pair

August 8, 2017 Stephen Clark

Ground observations of the New Horizons spacecraft’s next target last month revealed the distant object, lurking in the outer solar system more than four billion miles from Earth, might have an unconventional elongated shape, or even consist of two icy bodies orbiting one another in an age-old cosmic dance.

New Horizons to continue mission of discovery with Kuiper Belt encounter

January 22, 2017 Stephen Clark

Scientists planning the the next phase of NASA’s New Horizons mission, a robotic craft that completed the first exploration of Pluto in 2015, are going into the flyby of a frozen, faraway city-sized clump of rock on New Year’s Day 2019 armed with little knowledge of the target lurking around 4 billion miles from Earth.

Study shows Pluto should be counted among solar system’s ocean worlds

November 24, 2016 Stephen Clark

Scientists believe they can explain how an ocean of water is lurking beneath an ice sheet inside Pluto’s prominent heart-shaped region, an iconic frozen landscape discovered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby last year.

Final Pluto data transmission received from flyby probe

October 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

The last bits of data collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s speedy flyby of Pluto last year are back on Earth, scientists said Thursday, marking the official end of the probe’s prime mission.

Water ice abounds in Pluto’s frigid bedrock

January 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

New maps produced from data gathered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto last year show surprisingly widespread water ice shaping mountains capped by methane snow and forming an underlying bedrock blanketing the distant world.

Pluto’s floating mountains, intriguing structures fascinate scientists

January 5, 2016 William Harwood

Nearly six months after NASA’s New Horizons probe zoomed past Pluto, just one quarter of the data stored on board has made its way back to waiting scientists, revealing a surprisingly varied terrain that includes glacial flows and steep mountains of frozen water floating in a “sea” of slush-like nitrogen ice.

‘Weird’ mountains on Pluto may be ice volcanoes

November 9, 2015 Stephen Clark

Maps of Pluto charted using data from NASA’s New Horizons mission appear to show two huge mountains scientists said Monday could be ice volcanoes, a discovery that would set the distant dwarf planet apart among its neighbors in the outer solar system.

New Horizons takes aim on next target

November 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

In a triumph of deep space navigation and with Pluto shrinking in its wake, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has steered on a course to reach a tiny object named 2014 MU69 for a whirlwind visit on New Year’s Day 2019.