In the clean room at Kennedy Space Center’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, technicians prepare the New Horizons spacecraft for a media event, on Nov. 4, 2005. Photographers and reporters will be able to photograph the New Horizons spacecraft and talk with project management and test team members from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The large, black cylinder mounted to the spacecraft is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which will power the spacecraft to Pluto and beyond.
Carrying seven scientific instruments, the compact 1,060-pound New Horizons probe will characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and its moon Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine Pluto’s complex atmosphere. After that, flybys of Kuiper Belt objects from even farther in the solar system may be undertaken in an extended mission. New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program of medium-class planetary missions.
Image Credit: NASA