NASA is set to launch in January New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto, the only planet that has never been visited by a robotic probe, the characteristics of which should help to unravel the mysteries of the origins of our solar system .
If all goes as planned, the New Horizons probe, about the size of a grand piano, with seven scientific instruments and weighing 454 kg, come close to Pluto in early summer 2015 after traveling 6.4 billion km, says Andrew Dantzler, director of the solar System division at NASA. The probe will fly for six months while the smallest planet in the solar system and also the farthest from the Sun, around which it made a revolution in 248 years.
It may well take many pictures of Pluto, which remains an enigma seventy-five years after its discovery, and collect data on its atmosphere and geology. The only digital photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are very blurred.
New Horizons, a mission of $ 650 million, will also conduct observations of Charon, Pluto's largest moon and two other recently discovered by Hubble satellites. The small probe powered by a thermoelectric generator plutonium will then head to the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid belt surrounding our solar system, it will cross reaping a harvest information as valuable.
To save time, NASA will launch the probe on a powerful Atlas V-551 rocket with two floors, which will give him a huge velocity - about 50 000 km per hour - making New Horizons the fastest spacecraft.
continued...... in part 3
+NASA Astronauts
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