A maverick group of astronomers is proposing to radically reshape one of NASA’s most successful missions in the modern era, the New Horizons probe that flew by Pluto in 2015 and is now continuing its voyage into the depths of the outer solar system.
The group’s paper describing their proposal, submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and available as a preprint, suggests that before its fuel is spent and some of the systems are shut down to conserve power, New Horizons should be repurposed as a space telescope that can take advantage of the near-lightless conditions in the outer solar system to study stars, galaxies and more.
According to the paper’s lead author Michael Zemcov, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the idea is largely meant to “catalyze the discussion.” At the very least, some members of the New Horizons team approached him to try to incorporate the idea into an upcoming mission review. (Only one of the paper’s co-authors is part of the New Horizons mission.)
The plan calls for utilizing the Pluto probe’s eight-inch telescope, called the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), to peer at distant, dim objects beyond the solar system’s boundaries. LORRI, the group says, could be used to support NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a planet-hunting space telescope launching in April.
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