Jan 16, 2006, 19:56 GMT
Washington - Launch of the first probe ever to the most distant planet Pluto and the Kuiper Belt was on schedule for Tuesday, with an 80 per cent likelihood for good weather, launch weather officers said Monday.
Start of the rollout of the New Horizons Spacecraft aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket heads for launch pad 41, Monday 16 January 2006. The launch of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, bound for the planet Pluto, is currently targeted for Tuesday, 17 January 2006 at 1:24 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers program of medium-class planetary missions EPA/GARY I ROTHSTEIN
The Atlas 5 rocket with the New Horizons probe mounted atop was rolled out earlier Monday and installed on the launch tower in preparation for the nine to 14 year journey, space.com reported. Tuesday's launch window ranges from 1824 to 2023 GMT.
'The primary concerns for launch day are gusty southerly winds, isolated coastal showers and associated thick clouds,' the weather officials said.
A successful launch on Tuesday would put another feather into the cap of the U.S. space programme, already bolstered by the precision landing Sunday of the Stardust capsule carrying the first comet particles ever brought back to Earth.
The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) has until February 14 to launch New Horizons, but the earlier it departs on the 6.4 billion kilometre journey, the more use it can make of a gravity assist as it passes Jupiter, boosting its speed to 75,000 kilometers an hour.
The earliest arrival could be 2015, and it's imperative it gets there by 2020 before Pluto's winter sets in and its atmosphere of methane and other gasses starts to freeze and 'fall as snow' again, mission scientists say.
Pluto, the only planet that routinely eludes amateur and even professional astronomers, is so far out on the mysterious, cold, dark edge of the solar system that even the Hubble telescope can't get a clear picture of it.
As the Pluto team prepared for launch, Stardust mission experts have been busy since Sunday removing the precious contents of the probe after its seven-year, 4.6-billion-kilometre round-trip journey to the comet Wild 2.
Stardust's particle-collecting aerogel contains the first-ever comet particles and star dust for study on Earth, and the scientists worked in pristine laboratory conditions at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to avoid contamination.
Both the Stardust and Pluto missions are expected to shed light on the 4 billion year plus history of the solar system.
Pluto's far flung location has intrigued astronomers, who say the 700-million-dollar mission is like a trip 4 billion years back in time. To reach Pluto, New Horizons must also cross the crowded Kuiper Belt, the collection of debris that girds the solar system beyond Neptune and that astronomers believe was left over from formation of the solar system. Pluto is on the outer rim of the belt.
'Exploring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is like conducting an archeological dig into the history of the outer solar system, a place where we can peek into the ancient era of planetary formation,' said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator.
Pluto was only discovered 75 years ago, and its moon, Charon, half its size, was found in 1978. Just in May, two smaller moons were discovered rotating around the solar system's only 'binary' planet - so called because Charon's gravity pulls the two bodies into an orbit around a center of mass that is outside Pluto's surface.
Pluto takes 248 Earth years to complete an orbit around sun, causing one of the most 'complex seasonal patterns' of any planet, NASA said.
The probe is expected to photograph and map the surface of Pluto and its moons and determine the composition of its atmosphere, which likely contains nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane.
New Horizons is expected to approach Pluto as close as 10,000 kilometres. The probe, about the size and shape of an upright piano, is carrying seven instruments including a spectrometer named 'Alice', to examine the atmosphere, and a camera named 'Ralph', with ultra sensitivity to light levels that are 1,000 times fainter than daylight on Earth.
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