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Register a new userRalph: A Visible/Infrared Imager for the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt Mission
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The New Horizons instrument named Ralph is a visible/near infrared multi-spectral imager and a short wavelength infrared spectral imager. It is one of the core instruments on New Horizons, NASAs first mission to the Pluto/Charon system and the Kuiper Belt. Ralph combines panchromatic and color imaging capabilities with IR imaging spectroscopy. Its primary purpose is to map the surface geology and composition of these objects, but it will also be used for atmospheric studies and to map the surface temperature. It is a compact, low-mass (10.5 kg), power efficient (7.1 W peak), and robust instrument with good sensitivity and excellent imaging characteristics. Other than a door opened once in flight, it has no moving parts. These characteristics and its high degree of redundancy make Ralph ideally suited to this long-duration flyby reconnaissance mission.
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NASAs New Horizons (NH) Pluto-Kuiper belt (PKB) mission was launched on 19 January 2006 on a Jupiter Gravity Assist (JGA) trajectory toward the Pluto system for a 14 July 2015 closest approach; Jupiter closest approach occurred on 28 February 2007. It was competitively selected by NASA for development on 29 November 2001. New Horizons is the first mission to the Pluto system and the Kuiper belt; and will complete the reconnaissance of the classical planets. The ~400 kg spacecraft carries seven scientific instruments, including imagers, spectrometers, radio science, a plasma and particles suite, and a dust counter built by university students. NH will study the Pluto system over a 5-month period beginning in early 2015. Following Pluto, NH will go on to reconnoiter one or two 30-50 kilometer diameter Kuiper belt Objects (KBOs), if NASA approves an extended mission. If successful, NH will represent a watershed development in the scientific exploration of a new class of bodies in the solar system - dwarf planets, of worlds with exotic volatiles on their surfaces, of rapidly (possibly hydrodynamically) escaping atmospheres, and of giant impact derived satellite systems. It will also provide the first dust density measurements beyond 18 AU, cratering records that shed light on both the ancient and present-day KB impactor population down to tens of meters, and a key comparator to the puzzlingly active, former dwarf planet (now satellite of Neptune) called Triton, which is as large as Eris and Pluto.
The New Horizons ALICE instrument is a lightweight (4.4 kg), low-power (4.4 Watt) imaging spectrograph aboard the New Horizons mission to Pluto/Charon and the Kuiper Belt. Its primary job is to determine the relative abundances of various species in Plutos atmosphere. ALICE will also be used to search for an atmosphere around Plutos moon, Charon, as well as the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that New Horizons hopes to fly by after Pluto-Charon, and it will make UV surface reflectivity measurements of all of these bodies as well. The instrument incorporates an off-axis telescope feeding a Rowland-circle spectrograph with a 520-1870 angstroms spectral passband, a spectral point spread function of 3-6 angstroms FWHM, and an instantaneous spatial field-of-view that is 6 degrees long. Different input apertures that feed the telescope allow for both airglow and solar occultation observations during the mission. The focal plane detector is an imaging microchannel plate (MCP) double delay-line detector with dual solar-blind opaque photocathodes (KBr and CsI) and a focal surface that matches the instruments 15-cm diameter Rowland-circle. In what follows, we describe the instrument in greater detail, including descriptions of its ground calibration and initial in flight performance.
The central objective of the New Horizons prime mission was to make the first exploration of Pluto and its system of moons. Following that, New Horizons has been approved for its first extended mission, which has the objectives of extensively studying the Kuiper Belt environment, observing numerous Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Centaurs in unique ways, and making the first close flyby of the KBO 486958 2014 MU69. This review summarizes the objectives and plans for this approved mission extension, and briefly looks forward to potential objectives for subsequent extended missions by New Horizons.
Persephone is a NASA concept mission study that addresses key questions raised by New Horizons encounters with Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), with arguably the most important being Does Pluto have a subsurface ocean?. More broadly, Persephone would answer four significant science questions: (1) What are the internal structures of Pluto and Charon? (2) How have the surfaces and atmospheres in the Pluto system evolved? (3) How has the KBO population evolved? (4) What are the particles and magnetic field environments of the Kuiper Belt? To answer these questions, Persephone has a comprehensive payload, and would both orbit within the Pluto system and encounter other KBOs. The nominal mission is 30.7 years long, with launch in 2031 on a Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2 rocket with a Centaur kick stage, followed by a 27.6 year cruise powered by existing radioisotope electric propulsion (REP) and a Jupiter gravity assist to reach Pluto in 2058. En route to Pluto, Persephone would have one 50- to 100-km-class KBO encounter before starting a 3.1 Earth-year orbital campaign of the Pluto system. The mission also includes the potential for an 8-year extended mission, which would enable the exploration of another KBO in the 100- to 150-km-size class. The mission payload includes 11 instruments: Panchromatic and Color High-Resolution Imager; Low-Light Camera; Ultra-Violet Spectrometer; Near-Infrared (IR) Spectrometer; Thermal IR Camera; Radio Frequency Spectrometer; Mass Spectrometer; Altimeter; Sounding Radar; Magnetometer; and Plasma Spectrometer. The nominal cost of this mission is $3.0B, making it a large strategic science mission.
On January 1st 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the classical Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth (provisionally designated 2014 MU69), possibly the most primitive object ever explored by a spacecraft. The I/F of Arrokoth is analyzed and fit with a photometric function that is a linear combination of the Lommel-Seeliger (lunar) and Lambert photometric functions. Arrokoth has a geometric albedo of p_V = 0.21_(-0.04)^(+0.05) at a wavelength of 550 nm and ~0.24 at 610 nm. Arrokoths geometric albedo is greater than the median but consistent with a distribution of cold classical Kuiper belt objects whose geometric albedos were determined by fitting a thermal model to radiometric observations. Thus, Arrokoths geometric albedo adds to the orbital and spectral evidence that it is a cold classical Kuiper belt object. Maps of the normal reflectance and hemispherical albedo of Arrokoth are presented. The normal reflectance of Arrokoths surface varies with location, ranging from ~0.10-0.40 at 610 nm with an approximately Gaussian distribution. Both Arrokoths extrema dark and extrema bright surfaces are correlated to topographic depressions. Arrokoth has a bilobate shape and the two lobes have similar normal reflectance distributions: both are approximately Gaussian, peak at ~0.25 at 610 nm, and range from ~0.10-0.40, which is consistent with co-formation and co-evolution of the two lobes. The hemispherical albedo of Arrokoth varies substantially with both incidence angle and location, the average hemispherical albedo at 610 nm is 0.063 +/- 0.015. The Bond albedo of Arrokoth at 610 nm is 0.062 +/- 0.015.
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