PLUTÓN New Horizons Mission News

New Horizons Mission News
June 9, 2004

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu

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Instrument Profile: SWAP to Determine Where Sun and Ice Worlds Meet


The New Horizons spacecraft design includes six distinct instruments and a student-built dust counter -- this is the "payload" New Horizons plans to carry to Pluto and beyond. Our New Horizons instrument profiles continue with a look at the Solar Wind Around Pluto, or SWAP. The instrument is designed to measure the interactions of Pluto and Charon with the solar wind, the high-speed stream of charged particles flowing out from the Sun. Understanding these interactions will expand our knowledge of the astrophysical processes affecting these bodies and that part of the solar system.


Click here to learn more about SWAP's role on the mission, or visit: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/060804.htm.

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New Horizons is the first mission to Pluto, its moon, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt of rocky, icy objects beyond. Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, director of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Space Studies Department, Boulder, Colo., leads a mission team that includes major partners at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.; Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.; Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.



For more information on the mission, visit the New Horizons Web site at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu. More information on Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt is available at http://www.plutoportal.net.