EE 350 Radioscience Seminar
Professor Umran S. Inan
Winter 2005-2006
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Time: 4:15 PM – Refreshments at 4:00
Location:
WILLIAM R. HEWLETT TEACHING CENTER, Room 101
The New Horizons Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
Dr. Ivan Linscott Stanford University, Senior Research Associate, EE/Star Lab
Abstract
With the launch of New Horizons on January 19,2006, the long journey to Pluto and the
Kuiper Belt has begun. In the summer of 2015, if all goes as planned, New Horizons will fly through the Pluto-Charon
system, with its two newly discovered moons. Although the sun is dimmer there than here by a factor of about 1600, the
on-board instruments will capture high resolution images of the surface of Pluto and its moon Charon in both visible and
ultraviolet light. In addition, the spacecraft's X-band radio will receive a signal radiated five hours earlier by
transmitters on earth. As first Pluto and then Charon occult the view to earth, the radioscience experiment (REX) on New
Horizons, developed in STARLab at Stanford by Professor Leonard Tyler and his group, will determine from these
occultations the refractivity of Pluto's atmosphere and recover precise profiles of pressure and temperature, thus
fulfilling a prime and critical objective of the New Horizon Mission. I will tell something of the story of the
development of the New Horizons mission and the expectations for the science return from the encounter with objects in the
outermost regions of the solar system.
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