Aiming to uncover details about the composition and atmosphere of the solar system’s only planet not visited by a space probe, NASA will launch its first spacecraft to Pluto this week.
Dubbed New Horizons, the mission is receiving a major boost from Colorado companies.
While the spacecraft is scheduled to lift off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Colorado has had more workers on the program than any other state, according to Alan Stern, the project’s lead scientist and principal investigator.
More than 1,000 people in the state have worked on New Horizons, helping build everything from the booster rocket to the spacecraft’s “eyes.”
About two dozen people locally will continue to work on the mission during the craft’s nine-year and roughly 3 billion-mile voyage to Pluto and beyond.
Scientists hope to receive data transmissions from New Horizons through 2020 and study the information through 2025, Stern said. By the time the mission is completed, he estimates that roughly $200 million of the project’s $700 million price tag will have been spent on developments led by Colorado organizations.
“The New Horizons program and the upcoming launch just signify the continuing strength and excellence that Colorado aerospace companies have,” said Linda Strine, chairwoman of the Colorado Space Business Roundtable. “With their talented workforce, they’re able to win these kinds of contracts.”
Colorado’s aerospace industry ranks No. 4 in the country in terms of revenue.
Four local companies and organizations have major roles in the mission: Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. in Jefferson County, Ball Aerospace & Technologies in Boulder, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“Exploring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is like conducting an archaeological dig into the history of the outer solar system, a place where we can peek into the ancient era of planetary information,” said Stern, 48, executive director of the Department of Space Studies at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
For much of the past two decades, Stern has lobbied for the mission, which struggled for years to receive political support and funding. Congress finally gave $30 million in fiscal 2002 to jump-start the project.
NASA spokesman George Diller said $678 million has been earmarked for the project through 2015, and additional funds could be added later.
About 1,000 workers at Lockheed’s Waterton Canyon plant in Jeffco helped build the Atlas V booster rocket that will send the Pluto probe into orbit, said company spokeswoman Julie Andrews.
The probe will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched, reaching the moon in nine hours and passing Jupiter in 13 months, according to NASA.
Because it must travel farther than any other space mission, the piano-sized probe aboard the Atlas V is compact. It weighs just more than 1,000 pounds.
In comparison, the Cassini spacecraft exploring Saturn weighs more than 12,000 pounds.
Ball Aerospace in Boulder built Ralph, one of seven instruments carried by the spacecraft.
NASA calls Ralph, a camera and infrared spectrometer, the “main eyes” of the spacecraft. It is charged with providing the images of Pluto, its moons and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a mysterious region of icy objects left over from the formation of the solar system.
(Ralph and its partner on the project’s remote-sensing package, Alice, are named after the lead characters in the TV show “The Honeymooners.”)
About 100 Ball Aerospace employees worked on Ralph, a project worth about $20 million, said Ball program manager Bob Parizek. The instrument weighs 23 pounds and uses only 7 watts of power – equivalent to a bedroom nightlight.
Ralph will record images twice daily as the probe approaches, flies past and looks back at Pluto. Ralph also will help detect frozen nitrogen, water and carbon monoxide.
About 20 students at the University of Colorado at Boulder also built one of the mission’s payload instruments – a dust counter.
During the Pluto probe’s journey, the counter will detect microscopic dust grains produced by collisions among asteroids, comets and Kuiper Belt objects. That data will help scientists determine the mass and speed of dust in a region that no dust detector has ever entered.
The dust counter is the first scientific instrument on a NASA planetary mission to be designed and built by students. The college received $1.2 million in funding for the project, said Mihaly Horanyi, a CU physics professor who leads the project.
“This is the only instrument that will be on all the time,” Horanyi said. “We don’t go to sleep.”
Starsys Research Corp. in Boulder also had a small role in the launch.
The privately held company built thermal-management hardware that will help control the spacecraft’s temperature. Starsys was awarded about $250,000 for the contract.
Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, who serves as Colorado’s delegate to the Aerospace States Association and is co-chair of the Colorado Space Coalition, said the state’s participation in New Horizons strengthens its reputation as a leader in space technology.
“The sheer number of Colorado companies participating in the design and development of the New Horizons spacecraft is evidence of the ever-increasing prominence of our state’s aerospace industry,” Norton said.
Staff writer Andy Vuong can be reached at 303-820-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com.
