The first
spacecraft ever aimed at the planet Pluto is hours away from launching into
space on a nine-year mission to the distant, icy world.
NASA's LIVE webcast of New Horizons' launch begins at 11:00 a.m. EST. Click here. |
A Lockheed
Martin-built Atlas 5 rocket is poised to launch NASA's Pluto-bound probe New
Horizons at 1:24 p.m. EST (1824 GMT) today from Complex 41 at Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If successful, today's
space shot will begin a more than nine-year trek to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
for the piano-sized spacecraft.
"This is a
very exciting time," said Dale Cruikshank, a New Horizons science team
collaborator with NASA's Ames Research Center, during Jan. 15 preflight briefing.
"We are poised to begin the exploration of a new world, a world we didn't even
know that existed until 1930."
Discovered
by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at Flagstaff Arizona's Lowell Observatory in 1930,
Pluto is the only planet ever found by a U.S. citizen as well as the only one
found in the 20th Century, NASA officials said.
New
Horizons' flyby mission will mark the first time a spacecraft from Earth has
visited the small world, which will sit about three billion miles (nearly five
billion kilometers) from our planet during the 2015 rendezvous. The spacecraft
is also designed to visit one or more icy Kuiper
Belt Objects in an extended mission after the flyby.
The
spacecraft's launch window extends until about 3:23 p.m. EST (2023 GMT) today,
though the probe can launch anytime before Feb. 14 of this year. If the probe
launches by Feb. 2, it will be able to snag a speed boost from Jupiter between
February and March 2007 and reach Pluto sometime in July 2015, NASA officials
said.
New
Horizons and its Atlas 5 booster rolled
out to the launch pad without a hitch Monday and appear on track for today's
planned launch.
Weather
officials said Sunday that there is an 80 percent chance of favorable flight conditions
above New Horizons' Cape Canaveral launch site, though they will be watching for
high winds.
"We are
expecting winds in the lower 20 (knots) and mid-20s, and possibly gusts up to
30 knots," said Joel Tumbiolo, the mission's launch weather officer from the 45th
Weather Squadron at the Air Force Station, during a preflight briefing. "All of
those are below the threshold for our flight."
NASA will
provide live coverage of New Horizons' launch on NASA TV beginning at about
11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT). You are invited to follow along using SPACE.com's
NASA TV feed by clicking here
or the link at the upper left of this page.
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