Kuiper Belt - Exploration

Exploration

On January 19, 2006, the first spacecraft mission to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched. The mission, headed by Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, will arrive at Pluto on July 14, 2015, and, circumstances permitting, will continue on to study another as-yet undetermined KBO. Any KBO chosen will be between 25 and 55 miles (40 to 90 km) in diameter and, ideally, white or grey, to contrast with Pluto's reddish color. John Spencer, an astronomer on the New Horizons mission team, says that no target for a post-Pluto Kuiper belt encounter has yet been selected, as they are awaiting data from the Pan-STARRS survey project to ensure as wide a field of options as possible. The Pan-STARRS project, partially operational since May 2010, will, when fully online, survey the entire sky with four 1.4 gigapixel digital cameras to detect any moving objects, from near-earth objects to KBOs. To speed up the detection process, the New Horizons team established Ice Hunters, a citizen science project that allowed members of the public to participate in the search for suitable KBO targets; the project has subsequently been transferred to another site, Ice Investigators, produced by CosmoQuest.