In my final entry, I talked about how NASA was floating a bizarre proposal. In essence, the company needed to alter the New Horizons mission from a Kuiper Belt explorer to doing solely heliophysics.
This, whereas the spacecraft remains to be within the Kuiper Belt, exploring this largely unexplored a part of the Photo voltaic System. Oh, and the proposal additionally urged changing all the science crew (that constructed and is aware of the spacecraft). Or, at the least forcing them to recompete for his or her jobs.
The unique proposal had all this occurring in late 2024, leaving the crew little time to reply to the urged modifications.
Nicely, That Didn’t Occur, Precisely
After a number of months of hypothesis, a letter-writing marketing campaign, and a Change.org petition, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate final week introduced that the mission would proceed largely as is. It will preserve exploring the Kuiper Belt with funding assured till the spacecraft leaves that area someday round 2029. No phrase on whether or not the crew would get replaced, however for the reason that announcement urged that mission operations would stay as they’re, the crew could also be protected. The announcement was attention-grabbing for what it didn’t point out.
I assume that is excellent news, however I stay skeptical till I hear from the crew that they’re nonetheless employed doing the science they deliberate greater than 20 years in the past. There’s nonetheless time for them to do planetary science, in addition to heliophysics (which it’s been doing all alongside). And, when the spacecraft leaves the Kuiper Belt, it’ll nonetheless have sufficient gas and energy to measure what lies past.
I nonetheless surprise why NASA went by way of this entire train of threatening a working mission prefer it did. It’s a thriller, for now. However, we will at the least hope that possibly the spacecraft will ship us extra appears to be like at Kuiper Belt objects. The crew remains to be searching for a flyby goal, so let’s hope for the perfect.
