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News briefs
New Horizons news: An item at SpaceDaily today by Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond, tells about the state of the proposal for a New Horizons II mission. This concept was “born in 2002” as a “prudent backup” for the first mission, which will travel “both farther and longer than any spacecraft ever has had to undertake to reach its primary target.” The second mission would fly “to the Kuiper Belt via a fast trajectory that involves both Jupiter and Uranus flybys” to reach 47171 1999 TC36 [link|alt]. This was the first Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt object discovered to be binary, and Stern states that not only is the primary ten times bigger, but the secondary itself is two times larger than the largest object that the first mission “can possibly reach after Pluto-Charon.” Furthermore, he says, the second mission would fly past “a total of three or four KBOs, far more than the zero to one KBOs that can be reconnoitered by New Horizons I alone, owing to the well known power supply fueling problems New Horizons I has been saddled with” (see news yesterday). And he argues that potential cost savings for a second mission can be achieved “only if the second craft is identical to the first,” and only if built soon.
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Meteor news: KUSA-TV Denver reports late today, “Early-morning fireball streaks across Colorado sky.” It indicates there was one fireball seen at around 5:50 to 6am MDT this morning from Bow Mar, on the south side of Denver, and from Fort Collins, north of Denver, but with conflicting descriptions of direction.
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