Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa la misión de New Horizons Pluto Mission en Plutón:............."Mirando a los confines oscuros, exteriores de nuestro sistema solar, el Telescopio Espacial Hubble de la NASA ha descubierto tres objetos del Cinturón de Kuiper (KBO) de la nave espacial New Horizons de la agencia podrían visitar después de que vuele por Plutón en julio de 2015...........
Los KBO se detectaron a través de un programa de observación de Hubble dedicado por un equipo de búsqueda del New Horizons Pluto Mission, que se adjudicó tiempo de telescopio para este propósito.
"Esta ha sido una búsqueda muy difícil y es genial que al final Hubble podría lograr una detección - una misión de la NASA ayuda a otro", dijo Alan Stern, del Instituto de Investigación del Sudoeste (SwRI) en Boulder, Colorado, principal investigador de la New Horizons misión.................
This is an artist’s impression of a Kuiper Belt
object (KBO), located on the outer rim of our solar system at a staggering
distance of 4 billion miles from the Sun. A HST survey uncovered three KBOs that
are potentially reachable by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft after it passes by
Pluto in mid-2015
Esto es una impresión artística de un objeto del Cinturón de Kuiper (KBO), situado en el borde exterior de nuestro sistema solar a una distancia asombrosa de 4 mil millones de millas del Sol Una encuesta HST descubrió tres KBOs que son potencialmente alcanzable por la nave espacial New Horizons de la NASA después de pasar por Plutón a mediados de 2015
Image Credit:
NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Peering out to the dim, outer reaches of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble
Space Telescope has uncovered three Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) the agency’s New
Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit after it flies by Pluto in July
2015.
The KBOs were detected through a dedicated Hubble observing program by a New
Horizons search team that was awarded telescope time for this purpose.
“This has been a very challenging search and it’s great that in the end
Hubble could accomplish a detection – one NASA mission helping another,” said
Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado,
principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.
The Kuiper Belt is a vast rim of primordial debris encircling our solar
system. KBOs belong to a unique class of solar system objects that has never
been visited by spacecraft and which contain clues to the origin of our solar
system.
The KBOs Hubble found are each about 10 times larger than typical comets, but
only about 1-2 percent of the size of Pluto. Unlike asteroids, KBOs have not
been heated by the sun and are thought to represent a pristine, well preserved
deep-freeze sample of what the outer solar system was like following its birth
4.6 billion years ago. The KBOs found in the Hubble data are thought to be the
building blocks of dwarf planets such as Pluto.
The New Horizons team started to look for suitable KBOs in 2011 using some of
the largest ground-based telescopes on Earth. They found several dozen KBOs, but
none was reachable within the fuel supply available aboard the New Horizons
spacecraft.
“We started to get worried that we could not find anything suitable, even
with Hubble, but in the end the space telescope came to the rescue,” said New
Horizons science team member John Spencer of SwRI. “There was a huge sigh of
relief when we found suitable KBOs; we are ‘over the moon’ about this
detection.”
Following an initial proof of concept of the Hubble pilot observing program
in June, the New Horizons Team was awarded telescope time by the Space Telescope
Science Institute for a wider survey in July. When the search was completed in
early September, the team identified one KBO that is considered “definitely
reachable,” and two other potentially accessible KBOs that will require more
tracking over several months to know whether they too are accessible by the New
Horizons spacecraft.
This was a needle-in-haystack search for the New Horizons team because the
elusive KBOs are extremely small, faint, and difficult to pick out against a
myriad background of stars in the constellation Sagittarius, which is in the
present direction of Pluto. The three KBOs identified each are a whopping 1
billion miles beyond Pluto. Two of the KBOs are estimated to be as large as 34
miles (55 kilometers) across, and the third is perhaps as small as 15 miles (25
kilometers).
The New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006 from Florida, is the first
mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. Once a NASA mission completes its prime
mission, the agency conducts an extensive science and technical review to
determine whether extended operations are warranted.
The New Horizons team expects to submit such a proposal to NASA in late 2016
for an extended mission to fly by one of the newly identified KBOs. Hurtling
across the solar system, the New Horizons spacecraft would reach the distance of
4 billion miles from the sun at its farthest point roughly three to four years
after its July 2015 Pluto encounter. Accomplishing such a KBO flyby would
substantially increase the science return from the New Horizons mission as laid
out by the 2003 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between
NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science
Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is
operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy,
Inc., in Washington.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel,
Maryland, manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission
Directorate. APL also built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.
For images of the KBOs and more information about Hubble, visit:
For information about the New Horizons mission, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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