Pluto mission excites local astrophysicists

An unmanned NASA spacecraft the size and shape of a concert piano hurtled toward Pluto on Thursday on a 3-billion-mile journey to the solar system's last unexplored planet -- a voyage so long that some of the scientists who will be celebrating its arrival are still in junior high.

The New Horizons spacecraft blasted off aboard an Atlas V rocket in a spectacular start to the $700 million mission. Though it is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, capable of reaching 36,000 mph, it will take 91/2 years to reach Pluto and the frozen, sunless reaches of the solar system. "The Pluto Charon system and the outer small bodies are the last unexplored territory in our Solar System," said Professor Chick Woodward.

Professor Woodward is an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota. He was talking about Pluto and its moon Charon which orbits in the Kuiper Belt.

"There's many hundreds of thousands of very small icy bodies out there that contain the primitive material out of which our solar system formed, he said."

"From a pure knowledge base and pure discovery potential, this mission is extremely exciting." Pluto is the solar system's most distant planet and the brightest body in a zone known as the Kuiper Belt, made up of thousands of icy, rocky objects, including tiny planets whose development was stunted for unknown reasons. Scientists believe studying those "planetary embryos" can help them understand how planets were formed.

Pluto is the only planet discovered by a U.S. citizen, Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, though some astronomers dispute its right to be called a planet. It is a celestial oddball -- an icy dwarf unlike the rocky planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars and the gaseous planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"The sun is so dim from Pluto, and so far away, it just looks like a dot against the background skies," says the U of M's Woodward.

The 1,054-pound spacecraft was loaded with seven instruments that will photograph the surfaces of Pluto and its large moon, Charon, as well as analyze Pluto's atmosphere. Two of the cameras, Alice and Ralph, are named for the bickering couple from TV's "The Honeymooners."

The probe will rely on the natural decay of the plutonium to generate electricity for its instruments. NASA and the Energy Department had put the chances of a launch accident that could release radiation at 1 in 350. As a precaution, the agencies brought in 16 mobile field teams that can detect radiation and 33 air samplers and monitors.

Click here if you'd like to learn more about the New Horizons space mission.

By Mike Schneider Associated Press Writer and Ken Speake Senior Reporter, KARE 11 News

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