AAS 04-136 NEW HORIZONS PLUTO APPROACH NAVIGATION
The navigation of the New Horizons spacecraft during approach to Pluto and its satellite Charon is described. The great distance of the spacecraft from the Earth and Sun presents several new challenges that are identified and described by analytic formula. The two-body dynamics present a particularly interesting problem of satellite orbit determination. A complete covariance analysis is performed describing navigation and science data acquisition accuracies. The results of the covariance analysis are compared with analytic formula to provide insight into the operation of the navigation system.
New Horizons Mission Design for the Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission
As the first scientific reconnaissance mission to explore Pluto, the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission will investigate the geology, surface composition, and atmosphere of Pluto and its moon Charon and visit one or more Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) positioned beyond Pluto’s orbit. This mission will be implemented by launching a spacecraft, called New Horizons, to fly by the Pluto-Charon system and to encounter the KBOs, using a Jupiter gravity assist trajectory. Its mission design currently maintains dual compatibility with two EELV-class launch vehicles – the Delta IV and Atlas V, as guided by NASA. Planned for launch in January 2006, New Horizons will arrive at Pluto as early as 2015 or 2016, depending on the launch vehicle. The Pluto encounter trajectory design allows for both solar and Earth occultations by Pluto and Charon and permits simultaneous access to the spacecraft from two Deep Space Network (DSN) stations during the Earth occultation. A backup mission design for launch in 2007 provides New Horizons a fallback option that reaches Pluto in July 2020.
The General Theory of Relativity
THE WORD “SPECIAL” IN “SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY” means that the theory is restricted to those frames of reference for which the law of inertia holds, that is, inertial frames of reference.* Einstein sometimes referred to them as Galilean frames of reference. At first glance, it does not seem reasonable to expect that the principle of relativity can be extended to non-inertial frames. The reasons are fairly obvious. The principle of relativity that we have been using states that the laws of physics have the same form in all frames of reference to which the principle applies. In other words there should be no way to determine by an experiment which of two frames of reference is in motion relative to the other.