The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
Marc William Buie is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events.
The geology of Pluto consists of the characteristics of the surface, crust, and interior of Pluto. Because of Pluto's distance from Earth, in-depth study from Earth is difficult. Many details about Pluto remained unknown until 14 July 2015, when New Horizons flew through the Pluto system and began transmitting data back to Earth. When it did, Pluto was found to have remarkable geologic diversity, with New Horizons team member Jeff Moore saying that it "is every bit as complex as that of Mars". The final New Horizons Pluto data transmission was received on 25 October 2016. In June 2020, astronomers reported evidence that Pluto may have had a subsurface ocean, and consequently may have been habitable, when it was first formed.
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. Nix is the third moon of Pluto by distance, orbiting between the moons Styx and Kerberos.
Hydra is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of approximately 51 km (32 mi) across its longest dimension. It is the second-largest moon of Pluto, being slightly larger than Nix. Hydra was discovered along with Nix by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2005, and was named after the Hydra, the nine-headed underworld serpent in Greek mythology. By distance, Hydra is the fifth and outermost moon of Pluto, orbiting beyond Pluto's fourth moon Kerberos.
Sol Alan Stern is an American engineer, planetary scientist and space tourist. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express.
The New Frontiers program is a series of space exploration missions being conducted by NASA with the purpose of furthering the understanding of the Solar System. The program selects medium-class missions which can provide high science returns.
Tod R. Lauer is an American astronomer on the research staff of the NSF NOIRLab. He was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera team, and is a founding member of the Nuker Team. His research interests includes observational searches for massive black holes in the centers of galaxies, the structure of elliptical galaxies, stellar populations, large-scale structure of the universe, and astronomical image processing. He was the Principal Investigator of the Destiny JDEM concept study, one of the precursors to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission. Asteroid 3135 Lauer is named for him. He appears in an episode of the documentary series Naked Science. He joined the New Horizons Pluto team in order to apply his extensive experience with deep space imaging to the New Horizons data, yielding significantly clearer and mathematically accurate images of Pluto and Charon.
The exploration of Pluto began with the arrival of the New Horizons probe in July 2015, though proposals for such a mission had been studied for many decades. There are no plans as yet for a follow-up mission, though follow-up concepts have been studied.
Mark Robert Showalter is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute. He is the discoverer of six moons and three planetary rings. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Planetary Data System Rings Node, a co-investigator on the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn, and works closely with the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
486958 Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU69; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule) is a trans-Neptunian object located in the Kuiper belt. Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft when the NASA space probe New Horizons conducted a flyby on 1 January 2019. Arrokoth is a contact binary 36 km (22 mi) long, composed of two planetesimals 21 and 15 km (13 and 9 mi) across, that are joined along their major axes. With an orbital period of about 298 years and a low orbital inclination and eccentricity, Arrokoth is classified as a cold classical Kuiper belt object.
2014 PN70 (internally designated g12000JZ, g1 and PT3) is a trans-Neptunian object from the cold classical Kuiper belt located in the outermost region of the Solar System. It measures approximately 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter. The object was first observed by the New Horizons Search Team using the Hubble Space Telescope on 6 August 2014, and was a proposed flyby target for the New Horizons probe until 2015, when the alternative target 486958 Arrokoth was selected.
2014 OS393, unofficially designated e31007AI, e3 and PT2, is a binary trans-Neptunian object in the classical Kuiper belt, the outermost region of the Solar System. It was first observed by the New Horizons KBO Search using the Hubble Space Telescope on 30 July 2014. Until 2015, when the object 486958 Arrokoth was selected, it was a potential flyby target for the New Horizons probe. Estimated to be approximately 42 kilometres (26 mi) in diameter, the object had a poorly determined orbit as it had been observed for only a few months. With MPEC 2024-E99 the Minor Planet Center published on 6 March 2024 additional observations by New Horizons KBO Search-Subaru which allowed to compute a fairly reliable orbit.
Ralph is a science instrument aboard the robotic New Horizons spacecraft, which was launched in 2006. Ralph is a visible and infrared imager and spectrometer to provide maps of relevant astronomical targets based on data from that hardware. Ralph has two major subinstruments, LEISA and MVIC. MVIC stands for Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera and is a color imaging device, while LEISA originally stood for Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array and is an infrared imaging spectrometer for spaceflight. LEISA observes 250 discrete wavelengths of infrared light from 1.25 to 2.5 micrometers. MVIC is a pushbroom scanner type of design with seven channels, including red, blue, near-infrared (NIR), and methane.
Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is a telescope aboard the New Horizons spacecraft for imaging. LORRI has been used to image Jupiter, its moons, Pluto and its moons, and Arrokoth since its launch in 2006. LORRI is a reflecting telescope of Ritchey-Chrétien design, and it has a main mirror diameter of 208 mm across. LORRI has a narrow field of view, less than a third of a degree. Images are taken with a CCD capturing data with 1024 × 1024 pixels. LORRI is a telescopic panchromatic camera integrated with the New Horizons spacecraft, and it is one of seven major science instruments on the probe. LORRI does not have any moving parts and is pointed by moving the entire New Horizons spacecraft.
Alice is any one of two ultraviolet imaging spectrometers; one used on the New Horizons spacecraft and the other used on the Rosetta spacecraft. Alice is a small telescope with a spectrograph and a special detector with 32 pixels each with 1024 spectral channels detecting ultraviolet light. Its primary role is to determine the relative concentrations of various elements and isotopes in Pluto's atmosphere.
Kevin France is an astrophysicist and assistant professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. His research focuses on exoplanets and their host stars, protoplanetary disks, and the development of instrumentation for space-borne astronomy missions.
John T. Clarke is a professor of astronomy and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University. Clarke is best known for his Hubble Space Telescope observations of the aurora on Jupiter and Saturn, as well as over 260 papers in refereed journals, including every planet except Mercury and the interplanetary medium. Clarke's research is focussed on vacuum ultraviolet instrumentation and observations of planetary atmospheres. At present this includes primarily observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, overseeing the echelle channel on the MAVEN IUVS instrument orbiting Mars, and as Deputy-PI for the upcoming GLIDE mission to image the Earth's geocorona.
Dr Aki Roberge is a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she is currently the Associate Director for Technology and Strategy. Her research focuses on observational studies of debris disks and planet formation around nearby young stars, with an aim to be able to characterize planets around other stars, perhaps even to find signs of life on them. She is particularly known for her research on the debris disk around Beta Pictoris.
