NASA Probe Heading to Pluto in Good Health

A series of instrument checks confirms that NASAÂ’s New Horizons probe to Pluto is in working order. Weeks of tests on almost all of the spacecraftÂ’s seven instruments have been performed, said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.

“It’s really going spectacularly well. The whole approach to testing a spacecraft is to walk before you run.” Stern told SPACE.com of the spacecraft. New Horizons will fly by Jupiter in 2007, before heading on to Pluto for a 2015 rendezvous.

Six of the seven instruments aboard New Horizons have been turned on to check their health and functionality, said Stern, who is also the executive director of the space science and engineering division at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Two tools, the spacecraftÂ’s Student Dust Counter and its Solar Wind Analyzer around Pluto (SWAP), were expected to have seen first light by today, he added.

Mission planners expect to finish the first round of instrument checks by the middle of April, and the probe should begin initial calibration tests, including some observations, by the end of May.

“We’re very heavily invested in the Jupiter science planning,” Stern said, adding that the observation sequences need to be ready by this October. “We have a pretty tight schedule, and we still have some spacecraft checkout to do. But we’re above 90 percent now.”

Built for NASA by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, New Horizons launched on Jan. 19 on the first-ever mission to explore Pluto, its moons and the odd Kuiper Belt Objects on the edge of the solar system.
A series of instrument checks confirms that NASAÂ’s New Horizons probe to Pluto is in working order. Weeks of tests on almost all of the spacecraftÂ’s seven instruments have been performed, said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.

“It’s really going spectacularly well. The whole approach to testing a spacecraft is to walk before you run.” Stern told SPACE.com of the spacecraft. New Horizons will fly by Jupiter in 2007, before heading on to Pluto for a 2015 rendezvous.

Six of the seven instruments aboard New Horizons have been turned on to check their health and functionality, said Stern, who is also the executive director of the space science and engineering division at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Two tools, the spacecraftÂ’s Student Dust Counter and its Solar Wind Analyzer around Pluto (SWAP), were expected to have seen first light by today, he added.

Mission planners expect to finish the first round of instrument checks by the middle of April, and the probe should begin initial calibration tests, including some observations, by the end of May.

“We’re very heavily invested in the Jupiter science planning,” Stern said, adding that the observation sequences need to be ready by this October. “We have a pretty tight schedule, and we still have some spacecraft checkout to do. But we’re above 90 percent now.”

Built for NASA by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, New Horizons launched on Jan. 19 on the first-ever mission to explore Pluto, its moons and the odd Kuiper Belt Objects on the edge of the solar system.