NASA’sNew Horizonsmission just devolve a rare deep - space milepost where it is traveling billions of km away at the edge of the Solar System . On April 17 , it sweep the 50 astronomical unit of measurement ( AU ) score – one AU is the aloofness between Earth and the Sun – meaning it is now 50 time far from us than we are from the Sun .
When New Horizons first launch in 2006 , it look at just minutes to communicate with the spacecraft . Now , it ’s at a distance of more or less 7.5 billion kilometers ( almost 5 billion miles ) it take 7 hours for a message to gain Earth traveling at the amphetamine of light .
“ It ’s intemperate to envisage something so far away , ” Alice Bowman , the New Horizons mission procedure manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory , enounce in astatement . “ One thing that makes this distance tangible is how long it takes for us on Earth to confirm that the spacecraft receive our instructions . This went from almost instantaneous to now being on the lodge of 14 hours . It make the extreme length real . ”
New Horizons becomes the fifth human - made object to attain this far into the creation . It follows in the footsteps of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probe and Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 , all four of which carryplottable maps back to Earth . The latter two have left the Solar System and are nowin interstellar space . Voyager 1 is the furthest ballistic capsule from Earth at about 152 AU , three times farther out than New Horizon .
Last December , New Horizons actually snap a mental picture of the domain of stars in the direction of whereVoyager 1is . The spacecraft is too small-scale to be seeable but there ’s never been a chance for spacecraft at the edge of the Solar System to photograph each other like this before .
“ That ’s a hauntingly beautiful image to me , ” said Alan Stern , New Horizons main investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder , Colorado .
“ Looking back at the trajectory of New Horizons from Earth to 50 AU almost seems in some way like a aspiration , ” he stay on . “ vanish a ballistic capsule across our entire Solar System toexplore Plutoand theKuiper Belthad never been done before New Horizons . Most of us on the team have been a part of this deputation since it was just an estimate , and during that metre our kids have grow up , and our parent , and we ourselves , have rise older . But most significantly , we made many scientific discovery , inspired countless STEM careers , and evenmade a minuscule chronicle . ”
