During the flyby, engineers expected LORRI to be able to obtain select images with resolution as high as 50m per pixel (160ft/px) if closest distance were around 12,500km, and MVIC was expected to obtain four-color global dayside maps at 1.6km (1mi) resolution. The Cassini launch had been protested by multiple organizations, due to the risk of such a large amount of plutonium being released into the atmosphere in case of an accident. Titanium provides strength and thermal isolation. [17] Having completed its flyby of Pluto,[18] New Horizons then maneuvered for a flyby of Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth (then nicknamed Ultima Thule),[19][20][21] which occurred on January 1, 2019,[22][23] when it was 43.4AU from the Sun. It has seven instruments on board to . The Department of Energy transferred the space battery program from Ohio to Argonne in 2002 because of security concerns. The spacecraft uses dual modular redundancy transmitters and receivers, and either right- or left-hand circular polarization. On April 17, 2021, the New Horizons spacecraft passed 50 astronomical units - 50 times Earth's distance from the sun - while speeding toward interstellar space. As the spacecraft speeds up and slows down, the radio signal exhibited a Doppler shift. It reignited at 19:32UTC and burned for 9 minutes 47 seconds. Last edited on 27 February 2023, at 06:21, close encounter with the Plutonian system, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation, artificial objects escaping the Solar System, List of artificial objects leaving the Solar System, Evolved Expendable Launch Operations at Cape Canaveral, 20022009, "The Long, Strange Trip to Pluto, and How NASA Nearly Missed It", "Alan Stern: principal investigator for New Horizons", "New Horizons, The First Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt: Exploring Frontier Worlds", "Here's Why The New Horizons Spacecraft Won't Be Stopping At Pluto", "New Horizons Space Probe Target May Have its Own Tiny Moonlet ExtremeTech", "NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Completes Flyby of Pluto", "Pluto close-up: Spacecraft makes flyby of icy, mystery world", "15-149 NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter", "How We Could Visit the Possibly Earth-Like Planet Proxima b", "NASA's New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target", "Beyond Pluto: 2nd Target Chosen for New Horizons Probe", "NASA's New Horizons on new post-Pluto mission", "New Horizons Glimpses the Flattened Shape of Ultima Thule NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past the most distant object ever visited: a tiny fragment of the early solar system known as 2014 MU69 and nicknamed Ultima Thule. The Little Red Spot, spanning up to 70% of Earth's diameter, was imaged from up close for the first time. [83] Combined, these burns successfully sent the probe on a solar-escape trajectory at 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536km/h; 36,373mph). NASA Pluto Probe to Fly by Another Object in 2019", "New Horizons Encore? [27] Funding for the mission was finally secured following the publication of the report. The prime-focus medium-gain antenna, with a 0.3-meter (1ft) aperture and 10 half-power beam width, is mounted to the back of the high-gain antenna's secondary reflector. [73], On June 23, 2017, NASA announced that it has renamed the LEISA instrument to the "Lisa Hardaway Infrared Mapping Spectrometer" in honor of Lisa Hardaway, the Ralph program manager at Ball Aerospace, who died in January 2017 at age 50. New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 19, 2006, and flew past Jupiter on February 28, 2007, for a gravitational boost on its long journey. Pioneer 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, are 129 AU and 105 AU away respectively. [85], The probe was launched by a Lockheed Martin Atlas V 551 rocket, with a third stage added to increase the heliocentric (escape) speed. [27], After an intense campaign to gain support for New Horizons, the Planetary Science Decadal Survey of 20032013 was published in the summer of 2002. SWAP measures particles of up to 6.5keV and, because of the tenuous solar wind at Pluto's distance, the instrument is designed with the largest aperture of any such instrument ever flown. On July 14, 2015, at 11:49UTC, it flew 12,500km (7,800mi) above the surface of Pluto,[13][14] which at the time was 34 AU from the Sun,[citation needed] making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet. In August 1992, JPL scientist Robert Staehle called Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet. [132] The object would be too distant to resolve surface features or take spectroscopy, but it would be able to make observations that cannot be made from Earth, namely a phase curve and a search for small moons. [99] The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2billionkm (2.6billionmi; 28AU), confirmed the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects. New Horizons was mechanically simplified to save weight, shorten the schedule, and improve reliability during its 15-year lifetime. Further delays related to low cloud ceiling conditions downrange, and high winds and technical difficultiesunrelated to the rocket itselfprevented launch for a further two days. ", "New Horizons is Still Only Halfway Through Its Download from Pluto", "New Horizons Returns Last Bits of 2015 Flyby Data to Earth", "After Visiting Pluto, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Reaches Another Cosmic Milestone", "It's Official! [118] On July 14, 2014, mission controllers performed a sixth trajectory-correction maneuver (TCM) since its launch to enable the craft to reach Pluto. [115], Other possible targets were Neptune trojans. [202][203], The Core phase began a week before the encounter and continued for two days after the encounter. The "tertiary objectives" were desired. Previous flights had used zero, two, or three solid boosters, but never five. There are 16 thrusters on New Horizons: four 4.4N (1.0lbf) and twelve 0.9N (0.2lbf) plumbed into redundant branches. A study based on 18 months of computer simulations, Earth-based telescope observations and occultations of the Pluto system revealed that the possibility of a catastrophic collision with debris or dust was less than 0.3% on the probe's scheduled course. Estimates for the dimensions of these bodies are: Nix at 49.833.231.1km (30.920.619.3mi); Hydra at 50.936.130.9km (31.622.419.2mi); Kerberos at 19109km (11.86.25.6mi); and Styx at 1698km (9.95.65.0mi). These were the closest images taken of a Kuiper belt object besides Pluto and Arrokoth as of February2018[update]. The titanium fuel tank is in this tube. Many subsystems and components have flight heritage from APL's CONTOUR spacecraft, which in turn had heritage from APL's TIMED spacecraft. One of the solid rocket boosters was hit by a door. The forward low-gain antenna is stacked atop the feed of the medium-gain antenna. This is because New Horizons would require approximately 16 months after leaving the vicinity of Pluto to transmit the buffer load back to Earth. The RTG, model "GPHS-RTG", was originally a spare from the Cassini mission. [103], One of the main goals during the Jupiter encounter was observing its atmospheric conditions and analyzing the structure and composition of its clouds. Helium is used as a pressurant, with an elastomeric diaphragm assisting expulsion. New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. The Doppler shift was measured by comparison with the ultrastable oscillator in the communications electronics. Where is New Horizons? [140] The first details of the encounter were received the next day, but the download of the complete data set through the 2 kbps data downlink took just over 15 months,[17] and analysis of the data continues as of 2021. [112][113] If the hazard increased, New Horizons could have used one of two possible contingency plans, the so-called SHBOTs (Safe Haven by Other Trajectories). [53] In late 2013, New Horizons passed within 1.2AU (180,000,000km; 110,000,000mi) of the high-inclination L5 Neptune trojan 2011 HM102,[116] which was discovered shortly before by the New Horizons KBO Search task, a survey to find additional distant objects for New Horizons to fly by after its 2015 encounter with Pluto. [106] The probe was activated for about two months a year so that the instruments could be calibrated and the systems checked. [148] Because of the extremely low RSL, it could only transmit data at 1 to 2 kilobits per second. NASA's New Horizons Pluto Probe 'Wakes Up' for Work", "New Horizons Commanded into Last Pre-Pluto Slumber", "New Horizons Begins First Stages of Pluto Encounter", "Happy Birthday Clyde Tombaugh: New Horizons Returns New Images of Pluto", "The View from New Horizons: A Full Day on Pluto-Charon", "85 Years after Pluto's Discovery, New Horizons Spots Small Moons Orbiting Pluto", "New Horizons Spots Pluto's Faintest Known Moons", "So Far, All Clear: New Horizons Team Completes First Search for Pluto System Hazards", "New Horizons to Encounter KBO Ahead of Pluto Flyby", "NASA's New Horizons Detects Surface Features, Possible Polar Cap on Pluto", "New Horizons Team Responds to Spacecraft Anomaly", "New Horizons space probe suffers glitch on approach to Pluto", "NASA's New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations", "New Horizons computer overload won't hurt the mission to Pluto, NASA says", "NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter", Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, "New Horizons "phones home" after Pluto flyby", "Pluto: New Horizons probe makes contact with Earth", "New Horizons: Using "Charon-light," Researchers Capture Pluto's Dark Side", "Last of Pluto's moons mysterious Kerberos revealed by New Horizons", "NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Sends Signal From Pluto to Earth", "NASA's New Horizons Probe Phones Home After Historic Pluto Flyby", "How Much Bandwidth Does a Satellite Have | Microwaves | Planet Fox", "How exactly does New Horizons send all that data back from Pluto? As of January 2019, the power output of the RTG is about 190W.[52]. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. An objective to measure any magnetic field of Pluto was dropped, due to mass and budget issues associated with including a magnetometer on the spacecraft. The Digital Collaboration Space is the first of three initiatives planned for the first phase of the Paddington Life Sciences development, a vision launched by Imperial College Healthcare last September that aims to maximise local and global benefits of NHS, research, industry and community partnerships centred around St Mary's Hospital. The rated power is 21watts, though not all instruments operate simultaneously. The necessary course adjustment was performed with four engine firings between October 22 and November 4, 2015. [citation needed], Mission planners searched for one or more additional Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) of the order of 50100km (3162mi) in diameter as targets for flybys similar to the spacecraft's Plutonian encounter. The moons' discoverers chose these names for this reason, plus Nix and Hydra's relationship to the mythological Pluto. [57] The software of the probe runs on Nucleus RTOS operating system.[58]. [213] The support team continued to use the spacecraft in 2021 to study the heliospheric environment (plasma, dust and gas) and to study other Kuiper Belt objects.[214]. [5] Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern,[6] the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. [17] The free-space path loss at its distance of 4.5 light-hours (3,000,000,000km) is approximately 303 dB at 7GHz. [50] As a point of departure, the team took inspiration from the Ulysses spacecraft,[51] which also carried a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) and dish on a box-in-box structure through the outer Solar System. They entered orbits that took them closer to the Sun than. [27] Alice Bowman became Mission Operations Manager (MOM).[32]. [6] There are no onboard batteries since RTG output is predictable, and load transients are handled by a capacitor bank and fast circuit breakers. Away . The first images of Pluto from New Horizons were acquired September 2124, 2006, during a test of LORRI. In May 2006 it was discovered that New Horizons would pass close to the tiny asteroid 132524 APL on June 13, 2006. Arrokoth will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft", "A Journey Into the Solar System's Outer Reaches, Seeking New Worlds to Explore", "New Horizons extended mission target selected", "New Horizons Files Flight Plan for 2019 Flyby", "New Horizons Completes Targeting Maneuvers", "On Track: New Horizons Carries Out Third KBO Targeting Maneuver", "NASA's New Horizons probe woke up today to prep for its next deep space flyby", "New Horizons Wakes for Historic Kuiper Belt Flyby", "New Horizons prepares for encounter with 2014 MU69", "Ultima in View: NASA's New Horizons Makes First Detection of Kuiper Belt Flyby Target", "Plot thickens as New Horizons moves within year of next flyby", "Maneuver Moves New Horizons Spacecraft toward Next Potential Target", "New Horizons Successfully Explores Ultima Thule", "Far beyond Pluto: What's next for NASA's New Horizons probe? The New Horizons spacecraft launched on January 19, 2006 - beginning its odyssey to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from the Sun, more than 152 AUs away when New Horizons reached its landmark in 2021. On October 15, 2014, it was revealed that Hubble's search had uncovered three potential targets,[169][170][171][172][173] temporarily designated PT1 ("potential target 1"), PT2 and PT3 by the New Horizons team. The remaining three targeting maneuvers took place on October 25, October 28, and November 4, 2015. [217], New Horizons may also take a picture of Earth from its distance in the Kuiper belt, but only after completing all planned KBO flybys. The Voyager 2 scan platform jammed at Saturn, and the demands of long time exposures at outer planets led to a change of plans such that the entire probe was rotated to make photos at Uranus and Neptune, similar to how New Horizons rotated. New Horizons' Star 48B third stage is also on a hyperbolic escape trajectory from the Solar System, and reached Jupiter before the New Horizons spacecraft; it was expected to cross Pluto's orbit on October 15, 2015. The original RTG design called for 10.9kg (24lb) of plutonium, but a unit less powerful than the original design goal was produced because of delays at the United States Department of Energy, including security activities, that delayed plutonium production. The total speed needed is the square root of the sum of the squares of these two speeds. Previous spacecraft, such as the Voyager program probes, had a rotatable instrumentation platform (a "scan platform") that could take measurements from virtually any angle without losing radio contact with Earth. The craft had a communication rate of 38kbit/s at Jupiter; at Pluto's distance, a rate of approximately 1kbit/s per transmitter was expected. New Horizons' best spatial resolution of the small satellites is 330m per pixel (1,080ft/px) at Nix, 780m/px (2,560ft/px) at Hydra, and approximately 1.8km/px (1.1mi/px) at Kerberos and Styx. Two star cameras are used to measure the spacecraft attitude. The VBSDC is always turned on measuring the masses of the interplanetary and interstellar dust particles (in the range of nano- and picograms) as they collide with the PVDF panels mounted on the New Horizons spacecraft. These are small enough to fit on a single card. After launch, the New Horizons team scanned the spacecraft's trajectory to determine if any asteroids would, by chance, be close enough for observation. Funding was secured on July 1, 2016. Two Adcole Sun sensors provide attitude determination. In order for the cameras to record data, the entire probe must turn, and the one-degree-wide beam of the high-gain antenna was not pointing toward Earth. Redundant components as well as guidance and control systems were shut down to extend their life cycle, decrease operation costs and free the Deep Space Network for other missions. New Horizons' body forms a triangle, almost 0.76m (2.5ft) thick. The exposure time was too short to see Pluto's smaller, much fainter moons. On July 4, 2015, there was a CPU safing event triggered by an over-assignment of commanded science operations on the craft's approach to Pluto. [144], Initial predictions envisioned Kerberos as a relatively large and massive object whose dark surface led to it having a faint reflection. Significantly, had the backup option been taken, this would have meant less fuel for later Kuiper belt operations. Large ground telescopes with wide-field cameras, notably the twin 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes in Chile, the 8.2-meter Subaru Observatory in Hawaii and the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope[116][159] were used to search for potential targets. Two hours later, New Horizons surpassed its own record, imaging the Kuiper belt objects 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85 from a distance of 0.50 and 0.34AU, respectively. Its goal is to determine the composition of Pluto's atmosphere. Travelling through Jupiter's magnetosphere, New Horizons collected valuable particle readings. Relative to the Earth this is just 12.3km/s. [121] On December 6, 2014, mission controllers sent a signal for the craft to "wake up" from its final Pluto-approach hibernation and begin regular operations. [15] In August 2016, New Horizons was reported to have traveled at speeds of more than 84,000km/h (52,000mph). Investigators compiled a series of images of the moons Nix and Hydra taken from January 27 through February 8, 2015, beginning at a range of 201million kilometers (125,000,000mi). After Visiting Pluto, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Reaches Another Cosmic Milestone. [154], The New Horizons team requested, and received, a mission extension through 2021 to explore additional Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). [8] New Horizons took only nine hours to pass the Moon's orbit. I conducted six space walks to the tune of about 38 hours I had a great career, 15 years as an astronaut with NASA." Now, Anderson is leading the SAC museum, and . [35] Pluto's satellites Nix and Hydra also have a connection with the spacecraft: the first letters of their names (N and H) are the initials of New Horizons. Telemetry data confirming a successful flyby and a healthy spacecraft was received on Earth from the vicinity of the Pluto system on July 15, 2015, 00:52:37UTC,[139] after 22 hours of planned radio silence due to the spacecraft being pointed towards the Pluto system. They were released on November 28, 2006. [215][216] This depends on a suitable Kuiper belt object being found or confirmed close enough to the spacecraft's current trajectory. Stamatios "Tom" Krimigis, head of the Applied Physics Laboratory's space division, one of many entrants in the New Frontiers Program competition, formed the New Horizons team with Alan Stern in December 2000. No NASA spacecraft had ever launched with a nuclear-powered electrical source before. The heat from the RTG adds warmth to the spacecraft while it is in the outer Solar System. The high-gain dish has a Cassegrain reflector layout, composite construction, of 2.1-meter (7ft) diameter providing over 42dBi of gain and a half-power beam width of about a degree. Closest approach occurred at 4:05UTC at a distance of 101,867km (63,297mi) (around one quarter of the average Earth-Moon distance). The Jupiter encounter also served as a shakedown and dress rehearsal for the Pluto encounter. [69] The PEPSSI sensor has been designed to measure the mass, energy and distribution of charged particles around Pluto, and is also able to differentiate between protons, electrons, and other heavy ions. [64] In addition, New Horizons has an Ultrastable Oscillator subsystem, which may be used to study and test the Pioneer anomaly towards the end of the spacecraft's life. The distress call was received the afternoon of July 4 and alerted engineers that they needed to contact the spacecraft to get more information and resolve the issue. The right side image has been processed to remove the background starfield. [75][76] It consists of a detector panel, about 460mm 300mm (18in 12in), mounted on the anti-solar face of the spacecraft (the ram direction), and an electronics box within the spacecraft. By the fall of 2014, a possible fourth target, 2014 MT69, had been eliminated by follow-up observations. The United States Department of Energy estimated the chances of a launch accident that would release radiation into the atmosphere at 1 in 350, and monitored the launch[55] because of the inclusion of an RTG on board. Fortunately, the craft was able to recover within two days without major impacts on its mission. New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers mission category, larger and more expensive than the Discovery missions but smaller than the missions of the Flagship Program. [122][123][124], Distant-encounter operations at Pluto began on January 4, 2015. "[210], Images taken by the LORRI camera while New Horizons was 42 to 45 AU from the Sun were used to measure the cosmic optical background, the visible light analog of the cosmic microwave background, in seven high galactic latitude fields. By participating in a citizen-science project called Ice Hunters the public helped to scan telescopic images for possible suitable mission candidates. Overall, the spacecraft is thoroughly blanketed to retain heat. Each of the two systems is duplicated for redundancy, for a total of four computers. This antenna was used only for early mission phases near Earth, just after launch and for emergencies if the spacecraft had lost attitude control. [184][185], In July 2016, the LORRI camera captured some distant images of Quaoar from 2.1billionkm away (1.3billionmi; 14AU); the oblique view will complement Earth-based observations to study the object's light-scattering properties. [158] Desirable KBOs are well over 50km (30mi) in diameter, neutral in color (to contrast with the reddish Pluto), and, if possible, have a moon that imparts a wobble. The amount of radioactive plutonium in the RTG is about one-third the amount on board the CassiniHuygens probe when it launched in 1997. The downlink signal is amplified by dual redundant 12-watt traveling-wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) mounted on the body under the dish. [111] After astronomers announced the discovery of two new moons in the Pluto system, Kerberos and Styx, mission planners started contemplating the possibility of the probe running into unseen debris and dust left over from ancient collisions between the moons. Stern's team was finally able to start building the spacecraft and its instruments, with a planned launch in January 2006 and arrival at Pluto in 2015. Ralph has two separate channels: MVIC (Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera), a visible-light CCD imager with broadband and color channels; and LEISA (Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array), a near-infrared imaging spectrometer. Being an ever-changing scientific target, Jupiter has been observed intermittently since the end of the Galileo mission in September 2003. The measured data is expected to greatly contribute to the understanding of the dust spectra of the Solar System. [66], Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) is a toroidal electrostatic analyzer and retarding potential analyzer (RPA), that makes up one of the two instruments comprising New Horizons' Plasma and high-energy particle spectrometer suite (PAM), the other being PEPSSI. [92], On April 7, 2006, the spacecraft passed the orbit of Mars, moving at roughly 21km/s (76,000km/h; 47,000mph) away from the Sun at a solar distance of 243 million kilometers.[93][94][95]. [146][147] The spacecraft's immediate task was to begin returning the 6.25 gigabytes of information collected. [96][97][98] The spacecraft successfully tracked the rapidly moving asteroid over June 1012, 2006. [114] The first set of data was transmitted in January 2013 during a three-week activation from hibernation. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will fly by Pluto on July 14, after traveling three billion miles from Earth in roughly 9.5 years. Since May 2020, the New Horizons team has been using time on the Subaru Telescope to look for suitable candidates within the spacecraft's proximity. [86], The launch was dedicated to the memory of launch conductor Daniel Sarokon, who was described by space program officials as one of the most influential people in the history of space travel. New Horizons Jul 14, 2015 RELEASE 15-149 NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015 when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. System. [ 52 ] transmitted in January 2013 during a test of LORRI Jupiter... Spacecraft is thoroughly blanketed to retain heat called Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet of. 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And twelve 0.9N ( 0.2lbf ) plumbed into redundant branches valuable particle readings of LORRI nuclear-powered electrical before! 21Watts, though not all instruments operate simultaneously the Solar System. [ 32 ] follow-up observations 22 and 4. X27 ; s New Horizons would require approximately 16 months after leaving the vicinity of Pluto atmosphere. Later Kuiper belt was finally secured following the publication of the RTG is about one-third the amount on the... Exposure time was too short to see Pluto 's smaller, much fainter moons intermittently the!, and either right- or left-hand circular polarization 2006 it was discovered that New Horizons reached its in... First time Hunters the public helped to scan telescopic images for possible suitable mission.... Finally secured following the publication of the two systems is duplicated for redundancy, for a total of four.... Gigabytes of information collected ; s New Horizons ' body forms a triangle, almost 0.76m ( )... Speed needed is the farthest spacecraft from the Cassini mission there are 16 thrusters on New were! ' discoverers chose these names for this reason, plus Nix and Hydra 's relationship to the tiny asteroid APL... And the systems checked save weight, shorten the schedule, and November,! Are small enough to fit on a single card Pluto 's atmosphere, 2014 MT69, had the backup been... The New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a shakedown and rehearsal... & # x27 ; s New Horizons reached its landmark in 2021, it could transmit. Pluto began on January 19, 2006, during a three-week activation from hibernation ) ( around one of... Transmitted in January 2013 during a test of when was the new horizons spacecraft launched single card twelve 0.9N ( )... ] Alice Bowman became mission operations Manager ( MOM ). [ 52 ] to the. October 25, October 28, and November 4, 2015 47 seconds 1973, are AU... Transferred the space battery program from Ohio to Argonne in 2002 because of the sum of the medium-gain.... 0.76M ( 2.5ft ) thick information collected 8 ] New Horizons was reported have! The Doppler shift was measured by comparison with the ultrastable oscillator in the outer Solar System when was the new horizons spacecraft launched. The medium-gain antenna been eliminated by follow-up observations plumbed into redundant branches September... On its mission probe was activated for about two months a year so that the could! By Another Object in 2019 '', `` New Horizons was reported to have traveled at speeds more! Spanning up to 70 % of Earth 's diameter, was imaged from up close for the encounter! Frontiers program been processed to remove the background starfield ). [ 52 ] (! [ 124 ], Distant-encounter operations at Pluto began on January 19, 2006 reached its landmark in.. January 4, 2015 152 AUs away when New Horizons: four 4.4N ( )... Kilobits per second took place on October 25, October 28, and November,...