Intro music.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, built in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, will use several science instruments to unlock one of the solar system's last, great planetary secrets.
The first spacecraft to visit Pluto will be able to spot detail on the planet's surface that no other
space-observation platform has been able to accomplish, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
From the drawing board to completion, the New Horizons mission brought many challenges to its design and development team.
For the spacecraft, it's how we're going to get the power to run the spacecraft at these far distances.
We typically use solar arrays gathering energy from the Sun to power the spacecraft.
For this mission, we're so far away that the energy from the Sun,
the intensity of the sunlight, is less than one one-thousandths of the intensity at the Earth.
Think of running a transistor radio or something that uses solar cells in moonlight,
because that's the kind of light we have at Pluto from the Sun.
New Horizons is loaded with seven instruments specially built to examine Pluto and its moon, Charon.
Three cleverly named instruments -- Alice, Ralph and REX --, will take pictures of Pluto in different colors to help
determine the chemical makeup of the planet and its atmosphere.
LORRI, an optical telescope, will give us the highest resolution imaging of the planet's surface.
PEPSSI and SWAP are plasma-sensing instruments for measuring particles and properties of Pluto's
atmosphere and solar wind. SDC, an instrument built by students at the University of Colorado, will
measure dust impacts on the spacecraft during its entire flight.
All of these parts are rolled into a spacecraft about the size of a grand piano and weighing about a
thousand pounds. New Horizons' point of departure is Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida,
where it will be lofted into space on the most powerful Atlas V rocket ever used for a launch.