Guarded by Nuclear Protection Teams, U.S. to Launch Fastest Spacecraft,

Reports Aviation Week & Space Technology

January 17 Launch for the 36,000 MPH, Pluto-Bound Spacecraft

NEW YORK, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. is poised next week to fire
an unmanned spacecraft toward Pluto at a speed of 10 miles per second,
the highest velocity any space mission has ever been rocketed from
Earth, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports in its January 9
issue.

But there are some risks to the planned January 17 launching of the
$700 million "New Horizons" Pluto mission, says AW&ST. The spacecraft
is headed so far from the Sun that it must obtain electricity from a
radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) powered by highly
radioactive plutonium.

Although the plutonium is encased in a blast-resistant container,
AW&ST reports that the U.S. Energy Department will have sixteen mobile
emergency field teams and two radiological control centers positioned
discretely around Cape Canaveral to ensure public safety in the event
of a launch explosion.

Many such RTG systems have been launched on earlier spacecraft without
incident. AW&ST reports one new factor will be the launch on a
previously untested 2.4 million lb. thrust version of the Lockheed
Martin Atlas V rocket carrying a Boeing Delta II upper stage.

In an exclusive report, AW&ST says that in addition to precautions at
Cape Canaveral, the U.S. State Dept. is contacting Australia and
several nations in southern Africa to ensure public safety as the
probe passes near those countries during the latter phases of the
launch. Reunion Island, a popular French vacation spot, also lies
underneath the basic flight path, the magazine reports.

How fast is 10 miles per second? At that speed of 36,000 mph, the
probe will pass the Moon in only 9 hours, and would be able to cross
the entire U.S. in just 4 minutes.

The velocity is about 27 times faster than the Concorde supersonic
transport and 10,000 mph faster than most previous spacecraft
departing Earth for the Moon or planets. It will also be fast enough
for New Horizons to pass by Jupiter within 13 months -- a several year
trip for most previous spacecraft.

Jupiter's gravity will further accelerate New Horizons to 47,000 mph,
fast enough for it to reach Pluto 3 billion miles from Earth as early
as 2015, after a nearly ten year transit.

No previous space mission has ever studied up close the 1,470 mi.
diameter Pluto and relatively nearby 50 mile wide Kuiper Belt objects.
They are believed to be debris left over from formation of the solar
system 4.5 billion years ago.

Other spacecraft like Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2, have
flown further than Pluto but never ventured near it. They carried
politically correct "greetings from Earth" on plaques and phonograph
records. But not New Horizons.

The mission's lead manager Alan Stern from the Southwest Research
Institute at Boulder, Colorado, told AW&ST that doing something like
that involved too much federal bureaucracy.

Instead, the half-ton New Horizons spacecraft is carrying the names of
more than 430,000 space enthusiasts and a piece of material from Burt
Rutan's SpaceShipOne, the first privately built manned spacecraft. It
is also carrying material commemorating Pluto's discoverer Clyde
Tombaugh, who was cremated after his death in 1997 at age 90.

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