Space Exploration
From Bwtm
This page is about the exploration of space.
Contents |
Dawn
Dawn delves into the unknown, drives new technology innovations, and achieves what's never been attempted before. As a mission belonging to NASA’s Discovery Program, Dawn has orbited one member of the main asteroid belt, Vesta, and is now heading to explore a second new world, dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of its earliest history by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formation. Ceres and Vesta reside in the main asteroid belt, the extensive region between Mars and Jupiter, along with many other smaller bodies. Each followed a very different evolutionary path, constrained by the diversity of processes that operated during the first few million years of solar system evolution. When Dawn visits Ceres and Vesta, the spacecraft steps us back in solar system time.
- See more at: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/#sthash.dSlCEEaN.dpuf
New Horizons
Mission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
Voyage to an Unexplored Planet and a New Realm. The New Horizons mission will help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation.
The Journey: New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and will conduct a five-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015. Pluto closest approach is scheduled for July 14, 2015. As part of an extended mission, the spacecraft is expected to head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit.
Sending a spacecraft on this long journey will help us answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html#.VIyGYXtN-zk
Papercraft
papercraft model of the New Horizon spacecraft which is on a mission to explore Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt.
ref
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/06/image/a/