New Horizons Spots Its Target from Over 100 million Miles Away
New Horizons, an interplanetary space probe part of NASA's New Frontiers program, was launched back in 2006 with its primary mission to push the scientific discoveries of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Images taken by the spacecraft on 16th August 2018 mark the first detection of its New Year's Day flyby target, 2014 MU69.
Images of Ultima Thule taken by the spacecraft New Horizons. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
The small Kuiper Belt object, named Ultima Thule, was captured by New Horizon's own cameras from 107 million miles away and transmitted back to earth thanks to the Traveling Wave Tubes provided by Thales that are integrated in the probe. The missions scientists were thrilled to find the object in the exact location they had expected.
Such images were not thought to have been possible to attain before at least mid-September and expectations for the continuation of the mission have been raised and strengthened as a result. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern has expressed "this is good news because it helps our navigators better plan trajectory corrections" and that "an amazing exploration awaits!".
These discoveries could not have been achieved without the amplification technologies that Thales provides. As the historic world leader in RF technologies, Thales will be there for the flyby in January 2019 to push space exploration further than it has ever been before.
Thales's role does not stop there. Expert Traveling Wave Tubes are present aboard a number of other spacecrafts launched in recent years. Launched in August 2011, NASA's Juno continues its exploration of Jupiter, to be accompanied by Europa Clipper, a space probe which will, in the coming years, embark on its mission to perform a number of flybys of Jupiter's moon, Europa. With technology ever-developing, Thales is, and will continue to be a key contributor of many exploratory mission successes.