New Horizons Crosses the Orbit of Neptune
 
August 25, 2014:  NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has traversed the
orbit of Neptune. This is its last major crossing en route to becoming the
first probe to make a close encounter with distant Pluto on July 14, 2015.
 
The sophisticated piano-sized spacecraft, which launched in January 2006,
reached Neptune's orbit -- nearly 2.75 billion miles from Earth -- in a record
eight years and eight months. New Horizons' milestone matches precisely the
25th anniversary of the historic encounter of NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft with
Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.
 
http://tinyurl.com/koatvz6
 
NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft captured this view of the giant
planet Neptune and its large moon Triton on July 10, 2014, from a distance of
about 2.45 billion miles (3.96 billion kilometers) - more than 26 times the
distance between the Earth and sun. The 967-millisecond exposure was taken
with the New Horizons telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labo
atory/Southwest Research Institute. More
 
"It's a cosmic coincidence that connects one of NASA's iconic past outer solar
system explorers, with our next outer solar system explorer," said Jim Green,
director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "Exactly 25 years ago at Neptune, Voyager 2 delivered our `first'
look at an unexplored planet. Now it will be New Horizons' turn to reveal the
unexplored Pluto and its moons in stunning detail next summer on its way into
the vast outer reaches of the solar system."
 
New Horizons now is about 2.48 billion miles from Neptune -- nearly 27 times
the distance between the Earth and our sun -- as it crosses the giant planet's
orbit at 10:04 p.m. EDT Monday. Although the spacecraft will be much farther
from the planet than Voyager 2's closest approach, New Horizons' telescopic
camera was able to obtain several long-distance "approach" shots of Neptune on
July 10.
 
"NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system
where the giant planets orbit," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal
investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now we
stand on Voyager's broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and
mysterious Pluto system."
 
Several senior members of the New Horizons science team were young members of
Voyager's science team in 1989. Many remember how Voyager 2's approach images
of Neptune and its planet-sized moon Triton fueled anticipation of the
discoveries to come. They share a similar, growing excitement as New Horizons
begins its approach to Pluto.
 
http://tinyurl.com/exshu
 
Click to visit the New Horizons home page"The feeling 25 years ago was that
this was really cool, because we're going to see Neptune and Triton up-close
for the first time," said Ralph McNutt of the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, who leads the New Horizons
energetic-particle investigation and served on the Voyager plasma-analysis
team. "The same is happening for New Horizons. Even this summer, when we're
still a year out and our cameras can only spot Pluto and its largest moon as
dots, we know we're in for something incredible ahead."
 
Voyager's visit to the Neptune system revealed previously unseen features of
Neptune itself, such as the Great Dark Spot, a massive storm similar to, but
not as long-lived, as Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Voyager also, for the first
time, captured clear images of the ice giant's ring system, too faint to be
clearly viewed from Earth. "There were surprises at Neptune and there were
surprises at Triton," said Ed Stone, Voyager's long-standing project scientist
from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "I'm sure that will
continue at Pluto."
 
Many researchers feel the 1989 Neptune flyby -- Voyager's final planetary
encounter -- might have offered a preview of what's to come next summer.
Scientists suggest that Triton, with its icy surface, bright poles, varied
terrain and cryovolcanoes, is a Pluto-like object that Neptune pulled into
orbit. Scientists recently restored Voyager's footage of Triton and used it to
construct the best global color map of that strange moon yet -- further
whetting appetites for a Pluto close-up.
 
"There is a lot of speculation over whether Pluto will look like Triton, and
how well they'll match up," McNutt said. "That's the great thing about
first-time encounters like this -- we don't know exactly what we'll see, but
we know from decades of experience in first-time exploration of new planets
that we will be very surprised."
 
Similar to Voyager 1 and 2's historic observations, New Horizons also is on a
path toward potential discoveries in the Kuiper Belt, which is a disc-shaped
region of icy objects past the orbit of Neptune, and other unexplored realms
of the outer solar system and beyond.
 
"No country except the United States has the demonstrated capability to
explore so far away," said Stern. "The U.S. has led the exploration of the
planets and space to a degree no other nation has, and continues to do so with
New Horizons. We're incredibly proud that New Horizons represents the nation
again as NASA breaks records with its newest, farthest and very capable
planetary exploration spacecraft."
 
Credits:
Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
 
More information:
 
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977, and one of the spacecraft
visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 now is the most distant
human-made object, about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) away from
the sun. In 2012, it became the first human-made object to venture into
interstellar space. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft,
is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun.
 
New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers program. APL manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. APL
also built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.
 
The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Voyager missions are part
of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics
Division of the Science Mission Directorate.
 
To view the Neptune images taken by New Horizons and learn more about the
mission, visit:
 
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
 
For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:
 
http://www.nasa.gov/voyager
 
 
Regards,
 
Roger

--- D'Bridge 3.99
 * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)