After ten years of flying in space, the New Horizons spacecraft has reached the planet Pluto
New Horizons spacecraft
After more than ten years of flying in space, the New Horizons spacecraft has reached the planet Pluto, which is one of the farthest points that humans have reached in space in history so far. What is strange is that after covering billions of kilometers of flying in space, all of this within the boundaries of our galaxy, which may not exceed metaphorically. A grain of sand in our very, very large, vast planet.
It is truly amazing and amazing what science has achieved! A spacecraft flew in vast space for ten years until it reached the farthest planet in the solar system, Pluto.
Pluto :
On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union downgraded the rank of planet Pluto from planet to dwarf planet, and our solar system now has only 8 major planets instead of 9, the farthest of which is the planet Neptune, according to the new definition, because the orbit of planet Pluto is shared by other bodies, unlike the major planets that must Its gravity controls its orbit, so that if other bodies are found, it will either push them away or merge with it, and the issue has nothing to do with the size of the planet.
Pluto :
The dwarf planet Pluto was discovered by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, USA. It was originally considered the smallest of the nine planets in the solar system and has five moons, the largest of which is Charon, which is two-thirds the size of Pluto.
Pluto is about 4.67 billion miles from the Sun, while Pluto is about 5 billion kilometers from Earth.
The width of the dwarf planet Pluto is about 1,400 miles, which is estimated to be about half the width of the United States, or two-thirds of the width of the Earth's moon. Its surface area is approximately the same area as Russia, or slightly less. The area of planet Pluto is about 16.6 million kilometers, while the area of Russia is the largest country in the world. The world in terms of area is about 17.1 million kilometers, and what is amazing is that the planet Pluto makes one revolution around the sun every 248 years.
Pluto is so cold that life is impossible on its surface, and its temperature ranges between -228 and -238 degrees Celsius, as the icy planet is one of the coldest places in the solar system.
New Horizons Fantasy Journey:
According to the American “space” website, the New Horizons spacecraft reached the farthest planet in the solar system, Pluto, and the spacecraft took several amazing pictures of the surface of the dwarf planet. The pictures revealed that Pluto has a huge heart-shaped plain, towering mountains, and ice volcanoes. The pictures showed mountains of volcanoes on the surface of the dwarf planet. This dwarf planet spews a thick, wet mixture of water and ice instead of lava
Mount Wright, which is about 5 kilometers high and 150 kilometers wide, represents one of these types of volcanoes. Its size is similar to the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, which is one of the largest volcanoes on Earth.
New Horizons spacecraft:
NASA has developed several spacecraft, including the New Horizons spacecraft, which is the spacecraft that flew near Pluto for the first time on July 14, 2015, on a journey that took 9.5 years after the spacecraft traveled 3 billion miles, becoming the first and only spacecraft that could... To do so, it was launched on January 19, 2006, and the journey took nine and a half years.
New Horizons is the first spacecraft sent to the dwarf planet Pluto, which is about 4.7 billion kilometers from the sun, while Pluto is about 5 billion kilometers from Earth. The New Horizons spacecraft is the first spacecraft with which scientists were able to study Pluto and its moons, as well as study The Kuiper Belt, made up of icy ice, surrounds the solar system.
The probe launched from Earth on January 19, 2006 and reached the planet Pluto on July 14, 2015, approximately nine and a half years after its launch.
The New Horizons spacecraft is larger and more expensive than the Discovery spacecraft. The mission's costs, including spacecraft inspection equipment, the launch vehicle, mission operations, data analysis, and education and public awareness, amounted to about $650 million.
It took New Horizons only nine hours to reach orbit around the Moon. The New Horizons spacecraft flew at a speed of 59,400 kilometers per hour, making it the fastest human-made mechanism to date.
In December 2009, it became closer to Pluto than to Earth, at a distance of 3.436 billion kilometers from the Sun and 2 billion kilometers from Earth.
Planet Pluto is one of the planets in the solar system
The spacecraft reached its lowest distance from Pluto on July 14, 2015, at a distance of 12,472 km from the planet’s surface after a long journey that extended for nearly 10 years.
Where did the New Horizons spacecraft get all this energy to fly for more than nine years in space?
How was the New Horizons spacecraft able to fly all these years? The New Horizons spacecraft (probe) was equipped with a radioisotope generator containing 10.9 kilograms of plutonium-238, of the GPHS-RTG type. This generator contains 18 units, each of which contains 4 capsules, each containing 151 grams of plutonium oxide. The Los Alamos National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy prepared the capsules with the plutonium oxide in them.
The radioactive properties of plutonium-238 make it radioactively decay while emitting significant heat; It can be used to produce electric current by means of an electric thermocouple.
At the end of 2005, Los Alamos National Laboratory supplied the plutonium battery to NASA and was placed on the New Horizons spacecraft.
Source: websites