Just a quite post-sep thread to say congratulations to Alan and the team, here's to a clean checkout and small TCM's Many thanks for taking the time to share the experience to date with us here, your efforts are very much appreciated.

Doug

Thanks especially for your time in replying to questions here. This public outreach really gives a sense of involvement in the mission.

Yes, congratulations and best hopes for a problem-free cruise. Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

If Accoutrements ever comes out with spacecraft PI action figures, they should use Alan and Steve Squyres for the models!

I think it's amazing that people like Alan and his crew can put together such a mission and initiate it. I mean, there must only be a handful of people on this earth that have the technical knowledge to do that.

My question is that once the craft wakes up 6 months prior to the Pluto encounter, will it have time to take one or two pictures and send us a teaser image of Pluto? I think it'll drive me crazy to know that NH has a ton of images but we'll have to wait a few weeks before we can see any of them.

David

Congratulation too!!
(and hope NH isn't really going to encounter Venus, as launch director said!)

Alan addressed this at the press conference. Observations from the approach will be transmitted to earth on a daily basis until shortly before the approach. If I recall correctly, 6 weeks before the encounter, NH images will supass the best that Hubble can do. So there should be lots of pictures of Pluto looming larger.

TTT

P.S. Alan also announced that some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes are on board, as was surmised by many members here.

I join to this topic to express that I am very grateful to hear from your replies and also of your friends from NH team. I am very impressed of the organization NH team that is composed many groups (NASA, Boeing, Lookheed Martin, UJHAPL, Alan's university, what else that I cannot recall it or haven't heard of it).

Also many thanks for the USMF manager, Doug, to provide us the great tool so that we can join and share about the NH's ride to Pluto!

Rodolfo

Congratulations! To Jupiter, to Pluto, and beyond!

Congratulations to a good return on all the hard work! There's a reason things go right and that is due to the dedication and professionalism of the team leaders and members. And thanks for visiting us as well -

To Infinity and Beyond!

Assuming that there are quite a few people working on the NH program, what do they do during the big gaps of no activity of the space craft? Are they shared among other programs within NASA? I can't imagine a job where I'm free to go for 7 or 8 years and then I have to come back!

David

Spend those 'tween years trying to get New Horizons 2 funded.

Wonderful news. I am glad to know that the first human to leave our Sol system for the larger Milky Way galaxy (in some form at least) will be Dr. Tombaugh. He certainly deserves the honor.

Does anyone have or know where images of the capsule holding his ashes can be found? Where were they placed on the probe? Did a commemorative plaque or other message accompany them?

And if NH is ever found by starfaring ETI or our descendants, perhaps they will also have the technology to analyze Dr. Tombaugh's remains to learn something about a representative sample of a Twentieth Century human being from Earth.

I did a Google search for the news, and this is the odd place I found it (scroll way down):

http://www.superbowl.com/news/story/9170836

Audio of Clyde's widow, Patricia, talking about her husband:

http://web.dailycamera.com/video/todd/Patr...-2006-01-15.mp3

And just to throw this in, interesting article from last May by Alan Stern explaining how he came up with the probe's final name of New Horizons:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/369/1

Voyager 3 had actually been considered, but Voyager was a JPL project. They better start naming some other deep space probes Voyager 3 and so on, otherwise we won't have V'Ger to deal with in 300 years!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V'ger

I'd have thought that would be something of a private matter between Clyde's family and Alan.

Doug

The container and commemorative plaque for Eugene Shoemaker aboard Lunar Prospector was shown in public and with a fair amount of pride by its makers and his family.

I wasn't asking for a view of the ashes, just wondering if they had some kind of marker for it.

It's just nice to know that I once shook the hand of the first man to leave the Sol system.

Voyager 3 would have been a very good name for historical reasons, in spite of the fact that the spacecraft looks quite different from Voyagers 1 and 2. (But in a hundred years no one will care about that.) It's a pity they couldn't use it.

I would like also to congratulate Dr Stern. It has been amazing.
And really hope that you won't leave us and the forum
Our interest on NH, Pluto, KBO is persistent

Congratulations !!!

to Alan and the whole New Horizons Team on this exciting journey to Pluto and beyond !!!

as I write this she is more than halfway to the moon in the space of just a few short hours

To Infinity and BEYOND !!!

ken

(pluto loon)

Today was a good day! Congratulations to both the NH team and the Atlas launch team. Best wishes for a successful mission.

Congratulations to the entire New Horizons team!! A great example of persistance, patients, and commitment. They are an inspiration to me.

Congratulations!! A treasure trove of discoveries awaits us and it wouldn't have been possible without the hard work, dedication and perseverance of Alan, John, and the entire NH team. Congrats on a successful launch and good luck the rest of the way!

Just got off a plane and saw the happy news...Congratulations to Dr. Stern and the New Horizons & Atlas teams!!!!

And how profound it is that Clyde Tombaugh will, in abstract terms, be the only human being to visit a planet he himself discovered and also be the first of all men to leave the Solar System...a very fitting and awe-inspiring memorial.

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

To Alan, John and all others from the NH team who might poke their heads into this space on occasion:

Jolly good show! I know that, even after the metal is cut, the wiring installed, the instruments tested, spun, shaken and jarred, and the whole thing taken out to the pad and attached to a monster of a rocket... it wasn't going to be REAL until that monster flung your baby on its way.

Now it's real. New Horizons is on its way. Nothing, no one can call it back.

As I write this, your baby is passing the Moon's orbit. It's flashing away from us faster than any other man-made object ever has. And yet, even as it leaves us, it takes us with it. Our hearts and our souls.

And our enduring sense of wonder.

Jolly, jolly good show!!!

Now, let's go see what Pluto looks like!

-the other Doug

Like everyone else, let me say congratulations to the entire NH team. Amazing. Dramatic, beautiful, and with just enough tension to make the whole process a real nailbiter.

I also think this was an excellent job of outreach, everything from Alan's appearances on this board to the signature disk. I took more than a couple of skeptics and had them excited after running upstairs and printing out a quick certificate proving that their name was going in to space.

Thanks and congratulations!

--Nick

Congratulations for that beautiful (and sometimes tense) launch and for this outstanding work, and also hope the best for the journey that has just started.

Thanks to share with us this wonderful experience!

Thanks to all of you for being interested and for your good wishes. New Horizons is
operating flawlessly, and it looks like the Atlas gave us an almost perfect injection,
with the consequence being that we will have far more fuel for KBO exploration
than we had planned for in our nominal models. More later. Thanks again to all.

-Alan

It gets better and better. Heartiest congratulations!

Chris

It's gonna take Buffalo and Minnesota 2.1 billion years to win the Super Bowl?? I can't wait that long!!

You're quite welcome, Alan, and thanks for the wonderful news! May a nice, fat multiple KBO be found within the post-Pluto trajectory cone...

Congratulations to Alan, John and others involved who might be lurking here.

I also want to mention that it is great to have someone from the NH team active in this forum - thanks to Alan and John for lots of interesting postings here.

Hopefully everything works during cruise and the Jupiter/Pluto/KBO flybys. I'm already looking forward to the Jupiter flyby.

(and I'm definitely not going to complain about the fact that I was extremely unproductive for several hours last Thursday ).

I was a wreck - I don't think I've ever been as nervous about a launch as NH - I was hands-over-face-saying 'go go go go' in that quiet way you see people doing at the launch site - not even the MER launch had me so nervous. It's astonishing what effect these missions can have

Doug

>I was a wreck - I don't think I've ever been as nervous...

Shouldn't worry that much. If the launch is under sub-optimum conditions you end up with loss of vehicle and/or lives.

--Bill

I'm an undergraduate student at university and I'm curious about learning more about this mission. I was wondering whether there are some more "scientifically advanced" descriptions about the mission than those available at the official websites. That is, are there any documents that presume a far higher level of knowledge in physics? A scientific paper would be preferable.

Thanks

During the pre launch pressconference you told that the opening for the post Pluto trajectory was only 0.1 degrees. How much further will this open due to the fuel you saved ?

...Perhaps now 0.3 or 0.4 deg.

I wasn't nervous because...I MISSED IT!!

Congratulations to the amazing people envolved in this amazing mission...Time will fly and, in a blink, we'll be there.

Thank you for building up your dreams.

jinydu, check the books & resources folder of this forum for publications on unmanned spacecraft

Alan, congrats for the NH mission to the entire team behind it !

The fact that some of the NASA engineers & scientists are reading ( & replying on ) this forum once more highlights they are very open to spaceflight enthusiasts and media alike ( O.K. the latter 'sell' the stuff to the general public ).
In over 30 years I have been delighted by the 'openess ' of people involved in spacemissions ... compared to some astronauts ( no I do not mean Dr Armstrong but some 'guys' currently training ).

... ... ...

Wow, that extra fuel should really open the search area. I saw in the presentation linked to earlier that there is an option to look for Centaurs in the flight path as well. I presume you'll know more in a few weeks?

I was nervous as hell. I didn't get much sleep on all three of the nights before the launch attempts In the end I got to see a sucessfull launch so I guess it was worth it.

Universe Today Podcast: There Goes New Horizons

Summary - (Thu, 09 Feb 2006) Take a look through any book on our Solar System, and you'll see beautiful photographs of every planet - except one. Eight of our nine planets have been visited up close by a spacecraft, and we've got the breathtaking photos to prove it. Pluto's the last holdout, revealing just a few fuzzy pixels in even the most powerful ground and space-based telescopes.

But with the launch of New Horizons in January, bound to arrive at Pluto in 9 years, we're one step closer to completing our planetary collection - and answering some big scientific questions about the nature of objects in the Kuiper Belt.

Alan Stern is the Executive Director of the Space Science and Engineering Division, at the Southwest Research Institute. He's New Horizon's Principal Investigator.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/po...ons.html?922006