NASA's Pluto Probe Set for Flight

Posted on: Jan. 13th, 2006 || Source: space.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

NASA's Pluto Probe Set for Flight

A NASA probe bound for the planet Pluto and the distant icy realm of the Kuiper Belt is spending its final days on Earth as it nears its Jan. 17 launch date.

“We’re in great shape,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern told SPACE.com this week. “We have a very clean vehicle.”

(click to view New Horizon mission posters)

New Horizons cleared a Flight Readiness Review Thursday as the days tick down toward liftoff of the first-ever flyby mission to Pluto, mission officials said, adding that a series of mission news and science briefings will be broadcast on NASA TV beginning at 1:00 p.m. EST (1800 GMT).

Rollout of the spacecraft atop its Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 rocket is set for Monday morning at its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad in Florida. Booster fueling to follow shortly after, NASA officials added.

The spaceflight’s launch window opens at 1:24 p.m. EST (1824 GMT) on Jan. 17 and runs through Feb. 14, though the spacecraft must lift off by the end of January to take advantage of a gravity boost from Jupiter that could shave three years off its spacecraft. If all goes well, the probe should swing past Pluto and its moons in 2015, researchers said.

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