New Horizons is an interstellar space probe launched as part of NASA's New Frontier program. [4] The spacecraft was designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and launched in 2006 by a team led by Alan Stern,[5] with the primary mission of flying over Pluto to conduct research in 2015, and over the next decade to fly over and study one or more other Kuiper Belt objects (KBO), which became 486958 Arrokoth mission. It is the fifth probe to reach the escape velocity needed to leave the solar system.
For thousands of years, human beings living on Earth have been looking up at the twinkling stars and wandering the vast universe. Even today, sending astronauts out of the solar system is still a distant dream for humans. Fortunately, to date, humans have launched five unmanned space probes that are soaring towards interstellar space, the space between stars. The mission of these five probes is to explore the extrasolar planets of the Solar System (i.e., planets orbiting outside the asteroid belt: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), which capture enough data to change our inherent perception of the solar system while speeding through huge star bodies.
After completing their original mission, the probe's momentum (i.e., the tendency of objects to remain in motion in the direction of their motion) will continue to propel themselves out of the solar system and eventually into the vast expanse of the universe. Because of this, four probes carry "Earth business cards" on them, and if one day, alien intelligent beings read these "business cards", they will be able to obtain information about the inventor of the probe, that is, we humans. It is generally believed that once the probes reach interstellar space, it means that they have left the solar system. According to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the place where the "solar wind" is hindered by the "interstellar medium" is interstellar space, the "solar wind" is the plasma fluid that is constantly ejected into interplanetary space due to the expansion of the corona due to high temperature, and the "interstellar medium" is the material and radiation that exists between stars and stars in the galaxy.
The activity of the "solar wind" and "interstellar medium" forms a huge bubble around the sun, the "heliosphere", which can cover all the planets in the solar system. At the edge of the heliosphere, a theoretical boundary line was found - the "heliosphere top", according to the latest scientific calculations, once the boundary line of the "heliosphere top" is crossed, it can reach interstellar space. However, it is not easy to accurately measure this boundary line, because it is constantly shrinking or stretching, and it is difficult to estimate the exact time it will take for the detector to pass through it.
Currently, only five probes have their route orbits set to cross this boundary, and only two have been confirmed to have crossed this boundary. Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was NASA's first probe to carry a mission to explore exoplanets. The probe, which embodies human ambitions, has made one great achievement after another: it is the first successfully traversed the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the first to observe Jupiter up close, the first to use all nuclear power sources, and the first man-made object to fly out of the solar system.
Pioneer 10 was originally scheduled for only 21 months, but it far exceeded expectations and continued to work effectively for more than 30 years until January 2003, when it sent its last signal to Earth. At this very moment, Pioneer 10 is still drifting. It travels in a direction that deviates from the Sun's trajectory in the Milky Way, which is 18 billion kilometers apart. Like a ghost ship, Pioneer 10 quietly sailed into the cold, dark space more than 11 billion miles away from Earth.
This suggests that the probe is passing through the tail of the Sun, which is an extension of the heliosphere formed by surrounding interstellar matter, like the wake left by a ship traveling in the water. Although the Pioneer 10 probe is currently out of contact, the distant probe is expected to enter interstellar space around 2057, a journey that will take more than 85 years to complete. In two million years, it will pass through the eyes of the red giant Pyridon, taurus, which is currently 68 light-years away. Like its twins, Pioneer 11 achieved similar success. Launched a year later in 1973, it achieved its first flight to Saturn after becoming the second probe to successfully fly over Mars, the main asteroid belt and Jupiter.
But unlike Pioneer 10, after leaving Saturn, Pioneer 11 flew out of the solar system in the opposite direction, heading to the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius. NASA received the last signal from Pioneer 11 in 1995 before it went missing, a moment that marked the end of its incredible 22-year mission. Currently, the missing probe is 9 billion miles away, or 15 billion kilometers away, and is expected to reach interstellar space in 2027. After about 4 million years, Pioneer 11 will drift to the vicinity of Tianben VII, a young star about 125 light-years away.
Scientists have always known that probes will eventually travel to new exotic places in the Milky Way, so they are loaded with special information. Both probes are attached with gold-plated alumina plates to introduce humans to any other life that might encounter it. The aluminum plate is engraved with a man and a woman, as well as a diagram of our solar system, to reveal to them what we look like and where we come from. Shortly after the Pioneer's success, NASA launched what may be the most famous unmanned spacecraft to date, the Voyager probe. Both probes were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a rare arrangement of planets in the solar system's outer layer that appeared once in 175 years.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will be in perfect overflight positions, allowing each probe to detect giant planets in a way that has never been seen before. However, while passing jupiter and Saturn, NASA decided to change Voyager One's trajectory so that it could fly close to Saturn's mysterious, foggy moon Titan.
In 2012, Voyager 1 broke out of the confines of the solar system and became the first man-made probe in human history to enter interstellar space, and is still flying in deep space today. That same year, Voyager 2 continued its planetary journey, becoming the first spacecraft to meet ice giants Uranus and Neptune. When it completes this great voyage, it will rush out of the solar system like its twin sister, Voyager 1, and in 2018, it will cross the solar wind layer and join the ranks of deep space exploration. Voyager has been in the cosmos for more than four decades since its launch in 1977, and it's unbelievable that two probes are still in contact with NASA! They explore areas that have never been uncovered before.
The solar system is not Voyager's ultimate goal, and Voyager 1 will fly past Gliese 445, 1.6 light-years away, in 40,000 years. Gliese 445 is an M-type main sequence star located in the constellation Leopard , located 17.45 light-years from Earth. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 will meet the red dwarf star Ross 248 ( located in the constellation Andromeda , about 10.3 light-years from Earth ) at the same distance. In 256,000 years, the two ancient probes will drift past sirius, the brightest star in the night sky today (currently 8.6 light-years from Earth). Like the Pioneer, Voyager has a special mission, carrying time capsules that deliver messages to any alien cosmic traveler they encounter.
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The information, inscribed on a 12-inch gilded copper record, is about the sounds and images of Earth, documenting the colorful creatures and civilizations of Earth, representing our gorgeous planet sailing through the stars. The spacecraft that launched and will eventually cross the boundaries of the solar system into interstellar space is New Horizons, the only probe to have ever visited Pluto. After a 9-and-a-half-year voyage, New Horizons finally reached Pluto in 2015, showing us more details about Pluto's surface features up close. Since then, New Horizons has continued to explore deep space and became the first probe to encounter a Kuiper object, named Arrocos.
New Horizons will conduct a 30-year mission in the solar system before passing through the solar wind, and is expected to visit more Kuiper objects in the near future. According to NASA scientists, the power of the deep-space probe can only be maintained until about 2030, so it is still unclear whether it will still function properly when it enters interstellar space. Unlike previous probes, New Horizons doesn't carry a new plate to introduce us to any extraterrestrial life when they encounter it, but New Horizons carries something equally interesting.
The main component is attached to a small container at the bottom of the spacecraft containing the ashes of the scientist who discovered Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, an astrologer who opened the "third region" of the solar system, known as the Kuiper Belt, and the pioneering probes will be remembered for NASA's most successful missions, they are like ghost ships in the dark, unable to communicate with Earth, which is their fate.
However, voyager is still surprising scientists because they insist on exploring the unknown on the other side of the heliosphere, and as to how far it can go before it runs out of energy, only time will tell. All five excellent probes can only be seen as tools for further understanding of other places beyond the solar system, but they are of more significance than that, they remind us of our ambitions, being sent to the deepest and darkest regions of the universe, helping us find ourselves in the universe. Explore the remnants of civilization beyond our horizons.
Related knowledge
New Horizons is an interstellar space probe launched as part of NASA's New Frontier program. [4] The spacecraft was designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and launched in 2006 by a team led by Alan Stern,[5] with the primary mission of flying over Pluto to conduct research in 2015, and over the next decade to fly over and study one or more other Kuiper Belt objects (KBO), which became 486958 Arrokoth's mission. It is the fifth probe to reach the escape velocity needed to leave the solar system.
By: Blank, Active, astrophysics student