Mission to the outer limits.NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral) U.S. launch site for manned space missions. [U.S. Hist.: WB, So:562] See : Astronautics in Cape Canaveral Cape Canaveral (kənăv`ərəl), low, sandy promontory extending E into the Atlantic Ocean from a barrier island, E Fla., separated from Merritt Island by the Banana River, a lagoon; named (1963) Cape Kennedy in memory of President John , Fla., where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system solar system, the sun and the surrounding planets, natural satellites, dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that are bound by its gravity. The sun is by far the most massive part of the solar system, containing almost 99.9% of the system's total mass. . If all goes according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. plan, the craft will be launched in January 2006, swing by Jupiter for a velocity boost from the planet's gravity in early 2007, and in 2015 become the first mission to fly past Pluto and its moon Charon. These two small, icy bodies, and the collection of frozen miniworlds that lie beyond them in a disk-shaped reservoir known as the Kuiper belt Kuiper belt: see comet; Kuiper, Gerard Peter. Kuiper belt or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt Disk-shaped belt of billions of small icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune, mostly at distances 30–50 times Earth's distance , have never before been explored dose-up. Weighing nearly 1,000 pounds and carrying seven detectors, the probe will map the surface composition, temperature, and geology of the two distant bodies and will search for icy rings and additional, smaller moons around Pluto. By counting craters on Pluto, Charon, and perhaps several other bodies, scientists hope to determine the number of objects in the Kuiper belt. Direct measurements of the rate at which Pluto's atmosphere of hydrogen and helium escapes into space may reveal how Earth's atmosphere evolved.--A.C. |
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