* Astronomy

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RE: New Horizons mission

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New Horizons on Approach: 22 AU Down, Just 10 to Go

Few spacecraft travel 10 astronomical units during their entire mission. But with New Horizons already logging more than twice that distance on its way to Pluto, coming to within 10 AU of its main target is akin to entering the home stretch.
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Blobrana · L

New Horizons is a NASA robotic spacecraft mission currently en route to the dwarf planet Pluto.
New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory.
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Launch of NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft

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Is the Pluto System Dangerous?

New Horizons remains healthy and on course, now almost two times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, and approaching six years into its 9.5-year journey to the Pluto system.
We've taken the spacecraft out of hibernation to perform maintenance activities, and to re-point our radio antenna to compensate for Earth's movement around its orbit. This "hibernation wakeup" started November 5 and will last until November 15. Then New Horizons will hibernate again until early January, when we'll perform a more extensive, almost month-long wakeup.
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Dwarf Planet Mysteries Beckon to New Horizons

At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and still has four more years of travel to go.
New Horizons headed for the lonely world of Pluto on the outer edge of the solar system.
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New Horizons will conduct a special encounter-related test on May 20 using radio science experiment. Something very rare and special happens that day - the Earth, as seen from New Horizons, will be "occulted" (that is, blocked) by the moon. This will allow the practice, for the first time, the type of radio occultation New Horizons will perform at Pluto and Charon. Only three such alignments occur along our journey to Pluto, and they all happen in 2011 and early 2012.
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New Horizons team launches search for post-Pluto flyby prospects

The New Horizons team, working with astronomers using some of the largest telescopes on Earth, will begin searching this month for distant Kuiper Belt objects that the New Horizons spacecraft hopes to reconnoitre after completing its observations of the Pluto system in mid-2015.
No spacecraft has ever visited the Kuiper Belt, a distant, donut-shaped region of the solar system filled with small planets and comets that formed early in the solar system's history.
While the main target for NASA's New Horizons mission is Pluto and its three moons, New Horizons was built with post-Pluto Kuiper Belt object (KBO) flybys in mind.
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Blobrana · L

Today the New Horizons spacecraft crosses Uranus' Orbit.

Blobrana · L

New Horizons is a NASA robotic spacecraft mission currently en route to the dwarf planet Pluto.
New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory.
Read more

Blobrana · L

LORRI Looks Back at "Old Friend" Jupiter

In early 2007 New Horizons flew through the Jupiter system, getting a speed-boost from the giant planet's gravity while snapping stunning, close-up images of Jupiter and its largest moons. Fast forward to 2010 and New Horizons has given us another glimpse of old friend Jupiter, this time from a vantage point more than 16 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, and almost 1000 times as far away as when New Horizons reconnoitred Jupiter.
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