WELCOME

It's clear how fast it was coming close to Ultima

May 26, 2017 by Devin Jones

It's clear how fast it was coming close to Ultima Thule (which, incidentally, is just a little over 200km from Earth).

But as New Horizons' mission nears its target, we're only just beginning to see the difference between the spacecraft and that of its predecessor. We have to wonder, then, whether the mission was designed to make a single trip, or whether its camera and data recorder helped to make the leap from a mere camera to a larger spacecraft. Perhaps the first big clue came from the fact the spacecraft was equipped with the latest generation of supercomputers and a new kind of computer.

If the spacecraft is the product of a new era, the fact that it is at this time at least five years after its original launch from Cape Canaveral is a sign that it's going to be much, much slower.

The spacecraft was already in orbit around Ultima Thule when the launch vehicle's computer switched off. And the spacecraft was already about two minutes from its scheduled rendezvous with its closest approach—a speed of just 3.5 seconds. In the days since its launch, the spacecraft has been using its computer and supercomputer to build a huge database of data on its surroundings.

So, if the spacecraft is a supercomputer, who owns it? The answer is the people at NASA.

"The mission team is an aerospace company that is responsible for the science and development of spacecraft, including the high-altitude space telescope," says Scott Pannell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped design the spacecraft during its three-year mission to the Moon.

It was NASA's involvement that allowed it to send the first high-altitude instruments to the spacecraft.

In fact, it had been involved in its first real mission to the surface of the moon, using three Supercomputers. NASA's first successful mission, the first-ever lander on a moon that was used for scientific purposes, was called The Odyssey, and NASA was looking to use that mission to send a probe to the lunar surface.

Pannell was the lead engineer on the Mission to the Moon project that NASA made on board the spacecraft. That is, he and his team used two computers to create a database of data on the surface of the moon (as in, "this is what our data looks like"). The first mission to the moon was called Expedition 46, which was the most comprehensive scientific mission ever to be launched on a mission to the moon. In the following years the spacecraft