WASHINGTON — NASA has agreed to increase operations of its Latest Horizons spacecraft through late this decade to support “multidisciplinary” science that might include one other Kuiper Belt object flyby.
NASA announced Sept. 29 that it might extend Latest Horizons, currently approved for operations through the top of fiscal 12 months 2024, until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is anticipated around the top of the last decade. The main focus of the mission, starting in fiscal 12 months 2025, will probably be collecting heliophysics data because the spacecraft heads out of the solar system.
The arrangement, though, would allow the spacecraft to perform one other Kuiper Belt flyby, just like the flyby of Arrokoth it conducted in early 2019. While there are currently no known objects inside range of Latest Horizons, “this latest path allows for the opportunity of using the spacecraft for a future close flyby of such an object, should one be identified,” NASA said in an announcement announcing the extension.
“The Latest Horizons mission has a novel position in our solar system to reply vital questions on our heliosphere and supply extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of science at NASA, within the agency statement. “The agency decided that it was best to increase operations for Latest Horizons until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is anticipated in 2028 through 2029.”
The longer term of Latest Horizons has been unsure after NASA elected to increase the mission, a part of NASA’s planetary science division, only through 2024, proposing to then transfer it to NASA’s heliophysics division. That move was rejected by the mission’s principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who argued that the move would rule out any further work in planetary science by the unique mission team.
“We expect that that is shortsighted,” he said at a gathering of the Outer Planets Assessment Group, a NASA advisory committee, in May. “It was the one mission ever sent and the one mission planned to review the Kuiper Belt, and we’re still there.”
He said the project team had declined to submit a proposal for that heliophysics-only mission, putting NASA right into a quandary, although each agency officials and Stern said in May that it didn’t mean the mission would end after 2024.
Stern, in a social media post after the NASA announcement, thanked Fox and the agency for its decision on a brand new prolonged mission. “We’re excited to proceed the exploration of the Kuiper Belt and the outer heliosphere, two amazing science areas NASA is pioneering,” he said.
NASA said that the brand new prolonged mission will probably be jointly managed by NASA’s heliophysics and planetary science divisions, but “primarily” funded by planetary science.
“NASA will assess the budget impact of constant the Latest Horizons mission up to now beyond its original plan of exploration,” the agency stated, noting that the extension could impact research and evaluation funding for the Latest Frontiers line of planetary missions that features Latest Horizons. NASA added that “future projects could also be impacted.”
NASA spent $9.5 million on Latest Horizons in 2022 and proposed spending $9.7 million on the mission in its fiscal 12 months 2024 budget proposal.