New Horizons
Shedding Light on Frontier Worlds

New Horizons Mission Logo


"We Support a Mission to Pluto" Campaign Button,
used to create a link to the petition web site

Countdown to Pluto Closest Encounter:
 
 

The Model


This is the image that was my early standard for building the model.  I also utilized the Revision 12 PDF file that was published on the web (which was fairly accurate, though it also led me down a lot of wrong paths).  You can downolad that here.  As more photos became available of the actual spacecraft, I was forced to rebuild several features of the model.

You can build your own paper model of New Horizons for students and educators.
Click here for the files.

More to come at a later date....  Information on the spacecraft and the mission.....


2015: New Horizons Pluto Flyby
In the perpetual gloom at the fringe of the outer solar system, the New Horizons spacecraft skims over Pluto.  In the background,  Charon is a cresent moon and the Sun is a distant, dim star.


The Spacecraft
Early Concepts
As with most space vehicles, the New Horizons design went through several
different stages of evolution.  The two most famous early concepts are shown here:
Pluto-Kuiper Express
A large Mariner Mark II probe, very similar to what eventually became Cassini


Pluto Fast Flyby
This was to be a micro probe, weighing in at a mere 260 pounds!
The final spacecraft configuration, however, resembled this
fairly closely, only on a much larger scale.


New Horizons
These are the best illustrations I've found of the final, flight configuration of the spacecraft.

The Instruments of Science

New Horizons carries a suite of 7 experiments for studying the Pluto-Charon system and, later, the Kuiper belt:
RALPH
Visible and infrared imager & spectrometer.  This instrument will be the "eyes" of New Horizons during closest approach.  It will provide color, composition, and thermal mapping
ALICE
Ultraviolet imaging spectrometer: will analyze composition and structure of Pluto's atmosphere, and look for atmospheres around Charon and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs)
REX - Radio science EXperiment
This experiment utilizes the spacecraft's High Gain Antenna to beam radio waves through Pluto's atmosphere towards earth, to help understand it's composition 
LORRI - LOng Range 
Reconnaissance Imager
A telescopic camera.  Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any photos of it with the cover open!
This system will snap long range photos of Pluto, Charon, and KBOs prior to and during closest approach
SWAP - Solar Wind 
Around Pluto
Solar wind and plasma spectrometer.  This instrument will measure atmospheric "escape rate" and observe Pluto's interaction with the solar wind. 
PEPPSI - Pluto Energetic 
Particle Spectrometer 
Science Investigation
Energetic particle spectrometer.  This instrument will measure the composition and density of plasma (ions) escaping from Pluto's atmosphere
Student Dust Counter 
(SDC)
This device was built by students from the University of Colorado.
It will measure space dust impacting the spacecraft throughout it's mission

 

Links:

John Hopkins University - The Official web site for the New Horizons mission.
New Horizons Science Team Site - At Southwest Research Institute (SWRI)
The Planetary Society's New Horizons page - Part of the reason the mission happened was because of their grass roots campaign to save it after the budget axe fell on more than one occasion.
Kennedy Space Center - New Horizons images while being processed for launch at KSC.  This is by far the best seletion of photos of the spacecraft available on the internet.
NASA New Horizons Web Site
New Horizons paper model - By Vaughn Hoxie, from the University of Colorado
 

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