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REAL LIFE NEWS: NEW HORIZONS FLIES PAST URANUS

by Hazed

As we say farewell to Stardust, another of NASA's spacecraft has just passed a milestone in its mission to Pluto - New Horizons has flown past Uranus.

The bad news is that we can't expect to receive any pictures of the distant planet because the ship is in hibernation mode - and it didn't fly particularly close to the planet anyway. But it is significant in terms of the mission because it is a milestone on the long, nine and a half year journey to Pluto. It's now well over half way there.

By the time it reaches Pluto it will be three billion miles away from Earth. It will fly past Pluto and its moons Nix, Hydra and Charon. It will reach its destination in July 2015, so we have a while to wait before we get anything back from it.

The next milestone will be in August 2014 when New Horizons crosses the orbit of Neptune.

After it's had a look at Pluto and its moons, the ship will head off to the Kuiper Belt to take a look at some of the bodies that lurk out in the far reaches of the Solar System.

You can take a look at a map of the system which shows New Horizons' trajectory here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-horizons-flies-uranus.html

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