![NASA’s New Horizons mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA](https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/New-Horizons.jpg)
NASA’s Recent Horizons mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA
NASA’s mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth in 2019, will remain funded as a planetary mission through the top of the last decade, in keeping with a recent announcement by the agency’s .
The choice reverses an April announcement that proposed transferring the spacecraft solely to heliophysics starting in fiscal yr 2025, a move that will have taken the mission away from the team that has run it since its 2006 launch.
Many planetary scientists argued the initial decision made little sense as will probably be traversing the Kuiper Belt through 2028 or 2029 and is the one spacecraft there for the foreseeable future. Roughly 25 planetary and space scientists sent a proper to NASA in June objecting to the choice.
Among the many signatories were Jim Bell, former chair of the board; astrophysicist and Queen lead guitarist Brian May, and writer Homer Hickham.
Greater than 7,000 people signed a organized in August by the asking NASA to keep up as a planetary mission until it exits the Kuiper Belt.
“All of us on are comfortable that NASA has decided to proceed its exploration of the Kuiper Belt,” said mission principal investigator Alan Stern.
Mission scientists hope to search out one more KBO for the spacecraft to fly by while it’s on this region though this is much from certain.
Even when one other goal just isn’t found, “We’re studying recent, more distant KBOs from angles and closer ranges which you can’t get from Earth to find out their surface properties, their satellite counts and shapes, things that can’t be done well except by a spacecraft within the Kuiper Belt,” Stern said. The spacecraft is healthy and has sufficient fuel to operate into the mid-2050s, he added.
Inside days of NASA’s latest announcement, a separate team of scientists announced they might have 12 massive KBOs around 60 astronomical units (AU, with one AU equal to the common Earth-Sun distance of 93 million miles) from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been thought to increase to 50 AU. If confirmed, these objects, which could possibly be massive enough to qualify as dwarf planets, could indicate the presence of a within the distant outer solar system or just that the Kuiper Belt is larger than previously thought.
is currently 57 AU from the Sun. Stern said the spacecraft continues to detect dust that might indicate collisions of objects further out.
“The variety of impacts just isn’t declining. And the best explanation for that’s that there’s more stuff on the market that we haven’t detected,” Stern .