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Atlas V rocket and New Horizons spacecraft on the launch pad – Photo: Reuters |
Yesterday, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) postponed the second launch of the New Horizons spacecraft, which aims to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, after the flight control center at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland (1,600 km away from the launch site) lost power due to a storm in Laurel.
The day before, the launch of the Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft was delayed due to strong winds in the Cape Canaveral launch area. NASA hopes to resolve the issues in time for the spacecraft to launch this morning.
The deadline for launching the spacecraft is February 14, and it is anticipated that the spacecraft will reach Pluto in July 2015. The Pluto exploration project costs $700 million and is the only planet in the solar system that has yet to be explored.
Pluto is the largest planet known for its association with the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region extending from Neptune outward, surpassing even Pluto, and containing countless icy objects (considered remnants from the solar system’s formation period 4.6 billion years ago).
Exploring this belt will aid scientists in further understanding the architecture of our solar system.
N.T.ĐA
