The future of New Horizons hangs in the balance as NASA seeks to fundamentally change the focus of the mission.
But as Stern explained: “No spacecraft has ever explored the Kuiper Belt before and no spacecraft has plans yet to come again,” adding that “we know that if New Horizons is forced to quit exploring the Kuiper Belt, that will be the end of any Kuiper Belt exploration by spacecraft for decades because it takes so long to get out there.”The debate over the future of New Horizons began last year when the science team delivered a proposal to extend the mission for an additional three years.
New Horizons launched in early 2006, headed towards the outer regions of the solar system. The spacecraft was the, conducting the farthest flyby in history. In 2019, New Horizons searched for its next flyby target, a primordial binary object that was later named Arrokoth . The Kuiper Belt is filled with hundreds of millions of objects, of which New Horizons has so far explored 37.
also drafted an open letter highlighting how New Horizons can continue to be a “powerful cross-divisional tool.”
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