2014 MU69 – another goal spacecraft New Horizons – Interia

NASA chose the target flight New Horizons. He was the object in 2014 MU69, which also received the designation PT1.

Vision spacecraft New Horizons next PT1

/ NASA

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July 14 probe New Horizons (NH) flew around the dwarf planet Pluto. It was the first to fly past the building and the symbolic end of the first phase of exploration of the solar system. The eyes of scientists published an unexpected sight: traces of continuous activity and in many places young (in the geological sense) surface of Pluto.

Within a few days of your trip probe sent a small amount of data, estimated at about 5 percent. entirety. From September through the next several or even several months NH will send all the data to Earth. Until then, scientists will have to make a difficult choice: which object fly past the probe for several years.
Within a few years the passage of NH next to Pluto intensive search for more targets for the probe. Pre it expected that an ideal target for NH mission will have the following characteristics:
– diameter greater than 50 km,
– “primitive” object, remaining unchanged from the early solar system,
– neutral in color, compared with a reddish Pluto,
– double or object that has its own moon.
task proved to be difficult – Pluto is currently in the area of ​​the sky where the background is our own Milky Way. “Shelling” faint objects against many stars is a big challenge. The Earth’s observatories not podołały task – all discovered new objects proved to be too far away to probe the NH able to reach them. Therefore, in 2014 we harnessed the Hubble Space Telescope to search. The search yielded a positive effect – has been detected five objects that initially two, then three discarded. There are only two objects that bear an PT1 (ang. Potential Target) and PT3. PT1 received official designation of 2014 MU69, and PT3 – 2014 PN70.
From the perspective of the amount of available fuel choice PT1 is less risk for the mission, because more adjustments are possible trajectory. On the other hand getting to PT3 zużyłoby almost all of the available fuel probe, which makes it difficult maneuvers just before passage. PT1, however, is less an object of PT3, because its size is estimated at about 25-45 km. Without a doubt this is a smaller object than scientists assumed initial expectations. For comparison PT3 has an estimated size of 30 up to 120 km.
In late August, NASA officially decided: New Horizons will fly to PT1. The probe will perform a series of adjustments to the trajectory in late October and early November of this year. Flying there would be 1 January 2019. New Horizons team has yet to write an application to NASA for funding the expanded mission. This should take place in 2016. Then, a NASA official should accept and fund the work on the flight to PT1. Mission extended should be much cheaper than the intake and overflight NH next to Pluto. Choosing PT1 certainly had a relationship with the amount of available fuel on board the probe. At this time, it is estimated that the probe will consume about 3.1 available fuel for changing the trajectory to PT1. This means that it will remain still enough fuel to be able to carry out a close fly past PT1. Flight must be close – from a distance of no more than some one thousand kilometers – in the opposite case, the resulting images can be little to see.
PT1 can be a very interesting object: it is about 10 times larger and 1,000 times more massive than typical comets. On the other hand, PT1 is about 100-200 times lower than Pluto and the mass is only 1/10000 weight of the dwarf planet. Scientists, it seems that this may be a kind of “building blocks” of the Kuiper Belt, although some believe that it may be a remnant of the cosmic collision of two larger objects.
Flight New Horizons next PT1 will be approximately 43.4 astronomical units from the sun. This will be the farthest (from the Sun) of this type close to the object in the solar system. The current “record”, established July 14, 2015, belongs to the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby of Pluto. The distance of the probe (and Pluto) from the Sun at the time was 33 astronomical units.