New Horizons Follow On Target Identified

[Mr Shifty]

Looks like the Hubble time that the New Horizons team was granted this summer has borne fruit. There are now a primary and two secondary targets in the Kuiper Belt for New Horizons to try to visit after it flies by Pluto in July next year. Details at the link below:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/10151024-finally-new-horizons-has-a-kbo.html

[Dodgey]

All that's good news, I'm glad that they finally have a target.

[Streetwind]

Man, what would we do without Hubble. Sometimes it feels like you only need to point it anywhere you wish, and bam, something awesome falls out the other end. A shame that there is no direct successor planned.

[Mr Shifty]

A shame that there is no direct successor planned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

[Streetwind]

That's a successor in terms of scientific mission architecture - looking into the deepest reaches of the obersvable universe and detecting the faintest, oldest light possible to peer into the dawn of time. And I'm really stoked about whhat it might find there, too. It is however not a true replacement for what Hubble is currently doing.

JWST is an exclusively infrared telescope. It can barely even peek into the red-orange quarter of the vsisible spectrum at best. By comparison, Hubble can do the entire spread from infrared across visible into ultraviolet. It has a far broader range of applications, while JWST is relatively focused. I have no doubt that it will walk all over Hubble's achievements in the infrared spectrum, but there are some things it just cannot do. A new wide-spectrum, super-versatile orbital telescope would be a more fitting, spiritual successor to Hubble, even if it wasn't quite as extremely powerful in any specific spectrum as JWST is in infrared. For all of its age, Hubble telescope time is still an extremely hotly contested resource in the scientific community, so I'm sure there's plenty of work available to keep both JWST and such a high-versatililty telescope busy around the clock.

Ironically, Hubble cost well over 9 billion dollars to build, launch, repair and upgrade over time. Most of it went into the extremely overpriced shuttle missions. If they merely built a carbon copy of Hubble's fully upgraded configuration today, using previous design work, they could probably have a brand new one in orbit for under 500 million. It wouldn't be the most high tech thing anymore, but as the OP proves, it's still good enough to embarrass ground-based telescopes today, and would remain at least competitive for easily the next decade. Sadly congress would much rather spend that sum to buy half an Orion capsule with no destination, though...

Edited October 16, 2014 by Streetwind

[magnemoe]

Strange that web is not designed to also do visible light. As I understand it require helium for cooling it down so it can do infrared well.

As it will be put so earth will shadow it from the sun it will be put far outside moon orbit.

Then it run out of helium it can not be used for infrared anymore but could still be used for other observations if set up for it.

[Kryten]

Strange that web is not designed to also do visible light. As I understand it require helium for cooling it down so it can do infrared well.

As it will be put so earth will shadow it from the sun it will be put far outside moon orbit.

Then it run out of helium it can not be used for infrared anymore but could still be used for other observations if set up for it.

JWST doesn't use helium, just a sun shield.

[Mr Shifty]

Strange that web is not designed to also do visible light.

I suspect it's hard to design optics for wide-range acquisition; focal lengths, power absorption, and reflectivity all depend on wavelength to a degree. I design electronics for an infrared laser system, and wavelength effects are always a topic of discussion among the laser scientists operating the system. There are good reasons to use infrared, but most important is that very distant objects will be red-shifted due to the unverse's expansion.

[YNM]

Good to know that there's a next destination for New Horizons, so it's not a waste of single pass and instruments.

wrt JWST : Infrared is actually desirable - these space rocks often emmits more brighter in infrared (similar to how WISE is re-used briefly for searching asteroids and comets). Brown dwarfs and red dwarfs emmits most light in infrared. Many objects behind the galactic plane can only be imaged in infrared and radios. High redshift things will only be viewed in infrared. Granted it doesn't show up what you'd see with your eye, but it results in even beter datas. Infrared goes badly through our atmosphere - hence you need them in space, unlike visual telescopes, which since the introduction of AO ground-based ones becomes better.

Just wait for those 100m diameter ground telescopes to be a reality.

[gooddog15]

Ironically, Hubble cost well over 9 billion dollars to build, launch, repair and upgrade over time. Most of it went into the extremely overpriced shuttle missions. If they merely built a carbon copy of Hubble's fully upgraded configuration today, using previous design work, they could probably have a brand new one in orbit for under 500 million. It wouldn't be the most high tech thing anymore, but as the OP proves, it's still good enough to embarrass ground-based telescopes today, and would remain at least competitive for easily the next decade. Sadly congress would much rather spend that sum to buy half an Orion capsule with no destination, though...

Well Nasa has accepted a donation from the NRO that consists of 2 hubble derived reconnaissance satellites with 2.4m aperture's, which is the next best thing before the JWST (even though it doesn't come with the instruments in the box). There was talks of flying one of them to mars after JWST's launched, with the second put past Mars's orbit. They both could provide better imagery. The only thing Nasa has to do is pay launch costs and not use them to observe earth

Edited October 16, 2014 by gooddog15

[Kryten]

The only thing Nasa has to do is pay launch costs and not use them to observe earth

Also the actual instruments, the ground stations, the data reception, and pretty much everything else except a few lenses and a frame. It's very likely they'll both stay on the ground.

[Sylandro]

I am so ....ing pissed right now. I thought it was going to visit Eris and Haumea! WHY?

[Kryten]

Because that'd take a stupidly huge amount of fuel?

[Sylandro]

It'd still be more fruitful than visiting a bunch of asteroids, though

[Kryten]

Let me rephrase that; it'd take an impossibly large amount of fuel for any current launch vehicle. Besides, Eris or Haumea would be much more similar to Pluto than these smaller KBOs are likely to be-this gets a more varied science return.

[Mr Shifty]

Great article from the New Horizons PI about the KBO follow-on search. It really does highlight what a great achievement this is for human exploration:

If the 20th century astronomers who painstakingly searched for Plutoâ€â€like Percival Lowell and Clyde Tombaughâ€â€were alive today, they would be very proud of the still much-harder task that our KBO search team accomplished almost a century later. They would be even more amazed that the search to find them was carried out by a telescope in spaceâ€â€because nothing like that capability was even imagined when they were searching for Pluto. But, I believe, Lowell and Tombaugh would be even more amazed that the purpose of the search for these KBO was to send a machine to explore them!

[Oafman]

JWST doesn't use helium, just a sun shield.

Yeah just a sun shield, but quite an impressive one:

[magnemoe]

Let me rephrase that; it'd take an impossibly large amount of fuel for any current launch vehicle. Besides, Eris or Haumea would be much more similar to Pluto than these smaller KBOs are likely to be-this gets a more varied science return.

Compare to KSP, you are doing an high speed flyby of Dress, one who will send you on an sun escape trajectory, you can not do an mission extension to Eeloo unless very lucky.

You can only change your trajectory an tiny bit after the first flyby.

[KerikBalm]

It'd still be more fruitful than visiting a bunch of asteroids, though

Those follow on targets are not asteroids.