For 17 years, the New Horizons spacecraft has pierced our solar system at unprecedented speed. Launched in 2006, it passed Pluto in July 2015, returning the first close-up images of Pluto and the Moon. And in 2019, the spacecraft scouted the Kuiper belt object (KBO) Arrokos. Both encounters yielded a treasure trove of stunning images and transformative data.
With the 2024 budget cut, NASA is making some important decisions…one of which is replacing the current scientific staff with a new team to save about $3 million. It is to significantly reduce New Horizons’ funding by doing so. Planetary science budget.
Dr. Alan Stern, the mission’s lead researcher from the beginning, is not happy with the situation. “New Horizons is the only spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt and the only spacecraft currently planned to go to the Kuiper Belt. It must be completed every year until it leaves the belt.” After spending nearly $1 billion to get New Horizons to reach the Kuiper Belt, it would be a tragedy for many of us to stop this exploration prematurely. It seems to me to be an irrecoverable loss of scientific opportunity due to the poor use of tax dollars. ”
Related: NASA May Move New Horizons Pluto Probe to Solar Survey Mission
Rod Pyle is a space historian and author who founded and delivered executive leadership and innovation training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. For his work, Rod has received endorsement and recognition from the outgoing NASA Deputy Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Johnson Space Center.
As it stands, New Horizons should exit the Kuiper belt around 2028 and remain operational until 2050. “The spacecraft is still flying in good condition, returning data from the outer edge of the solar system and preparing for a possible encounter with another KBO.” threatens the continued progress of the United States,” Stern added.
Budget cuts across NASA’s various programs and missions are expected, but New Horizons’ current budget is roughly on par with other longtime deep-space veterans, Voyager 1 and 2. Well below $10 million a year. That’s a tiny fraction from a government perspective…especially given the cost of moving spacecraft to their current locations. It’s a sunk cost, and the payout is the ongoing scientific gains from the mission.
When New Horizons passed Pluto, an unprecedented sight returned to the previously mysterious world and its large moon Charon. Until now, the best images of Pluto have come from the Hubble Space Telescope and were just smudges just a few pixels wide. The images and data returned from New Horizons have overturned many assumptions about not only Pluto and Charon, but also the outer solar system.
“New Horizons literally wrote a book about Pluto and its moon system. Before New Horizons, very little was known. Today, the New Horizons spacecraft and team make Pluto the most powerful planet in the solar system. We made it one of the familiar worlds,” Stern said.
New Horizons’ next adventure was in the Kuiper belt, a rock-and-ice-filled region left over from the early days of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Stern’s team targeted his KBO 486958 Arrokoth, which also turned out to be a golden opportunity.
“Arrokos may have been more important than the discovery of Pluto,” Stern commented. “For decades, two computer models of the birth of planets and the formation of asteroids have been disputed: one by high-velocity collisions in orbit around the Sun, the other by very It was due to local collapsing clouds due to a mild impact on the volcano.” A thorough investigation of Arrokos validated the latter model. “These objects turned out to have impacted at very low velocities, like hitting a wall, rather than a supersonic impact.” It turns out that it was built by a mild impact “increase,” he added. Only direct observation could resolve this argument.
If NASA were to cut funding for this modestly budgeted mission, perhaps a new team with no direct experience in operating the outer solar system would be set up to focus on solar physics, the distant plasma environment of the solar system. The focus will shift to low-level data collection. Sun. This scaled-down mission will utilize only a fraction of the spacecraft’s ongoing scientific capabilities.
“We’ve been flying for 18 years and have the potential to fly as long as Voyager,” said Stern, who has now been flying for 46 years. “At that point, we’ll be well beyond the Kuiper belt and into interstellar space.” Exploring using outdated technology and equipment, they have been shut down due to aging, and mission operations will be scaled back until they are finished in a decade or so. “New Horizons should be able to continue into at least the middle of the 21st century,” Stern added, “with near-state-of-the-art equipment that could change the way we see interstellar space. We have an understanding of Pluto and the KBO, but none of it justifies curtailing the current Kuiper belt exploration.”
With nearly a billion-dollar spacecraft and state-of-the-art equipment at stake, a vast trove of data containing clues about the Kuiper belt, a valuable and unique data that will be lost due to mission changes. It seems incredibly wasteful to ignore . The very formation of our solar system.
Organizations such as the American Space Association have posted petitions on Change.org to send to NASA and Congress. Prominent voices supporting the continuation of the ongoing mission include renowned rock musician and astrophysicist Sir Brian May, former NASA Deputy Administrator Laurie Gerber, and science communicator Bill Nighy. .
Only through public action will our voice be heard and our mission will continue to the best of our ability. It may be decades before another robotic aircraft is sent this way. Probably longer. Your voice matters.going to Save New Horizons petition page To let NASA know that science matters.