The idea was shortly scrapped, however, because of the infeasibility of miniaturizing scientific instruments aboard such a spacecraft to that size. One of the earliest concepts was for a 40-kilogram spacecraft that would reach Pluto in five to six years. At the time, it was thought that the atmosphere of Pluto would freeze and fall to the surface during winter, and so a lightweight spacecraft was desirable, as it would be able to reach Pluto before such an event would occur. In 1990, because of pressure from the scientific community, including those of the Pluto Underground, engineers at NASA decided to look into concepts for a mission to Pluto. The group started a letter writing campaign which aimed to bring to attention Pluto as a viable target for exploration. It was named in homage of the Mars Underground, another group of scientists that successfully lobbied for the restart of missions to Mars, following the lack of such since the Viking program. In May 1989, a group of scientists and engineers, including Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal, formed an alliance called the "Pluto Underground". This was later ruled out in favor of a smaller, less expensive spacecraft similar to the "Pluto 350" concept. One of the many early concepts for a mission to Pluto was to send a Mariner Mark II spacecraft. The Pluto Underground, Pluto 350 and Mariner Mark II The mission was tagged "Fire and Ice." However, the proposal was not accepted. In the 1980s, Robert Farquhar proposed that a Pluto mission could be added to the proposed Solar Probe mission, which at the time was proposed to fly by Jupiter on the way to its solar encounter. Because no mission to Pluto was planned by any space agency at the time, it would be left unexplored by interplanetary spacecraft for years to come.Īfter the success of the Voyager program, planetary scientists looked to Pluto as the destination for a subsequent mission. However, scientists decided that a flyby of Titan during the Saturn encounter would be a more important scientific objective, making a subsequent flyby of Pluto impossible, because the close approach to Titan put it on a trajectory that slingshotted it out of the plane of the solar system. One of many possibilities for the Voyager 1 spacecraft after its flyby of Saturn in 1980 was to use Saturn as a slingshot towards Pluto for a flyby as early as March 1986. Due to the cost, the mission was not funded, although the planetary alignment was used by the two probes of the Voyager program, launched in 1977. In 1964, Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed a mission called Grand Tour, taking advantage of the fact that an alignment of planets in the late 1970s would enable a single spacecraft to visit all of the outer planets, including Pluto, by using gravity assists. Pluto, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, is an interesting target for planetary exploration, but Pluto presents significant challenges for exploration because of its small mass and great distance from Earth. There are no plans as yet for a follow-up mission, though follow-up concepts have been studied. Inside they found Ham in good spirits, and he excitedly accepted an apple and half an orange.The exploration of Pluto began with the arrival of the New Horizons probe in July 2015, though proposals for such a mission had been studied for many decades. It landed out of sight of the recovery forces, but they found the ship within a half hour and airlifted it to the nearby USS Donner. Then 16 minutes and 39 seconds after the launch, the craft splashed down in the Atlantic. The rocket also reached a higher speed than expected and Ham was weightless for 6.6 minutes instead of the expected 4.9 minutes.ĭespite the issues that arose, Ham successfully went about completing his tasks, which included pushing levers about 50 times. There were also cameras onboard that showed how Ham reacted to the weightlessness and also revealed a surprising amount of dust floating in the air. Additionally, the cabin pressure dropped due to an unexpected issue, but Ham was safe in his space suit. The rocket ended up on a high flight angle, which would lead to it missing its landing area by 130 miles. The launch was delayed for nearly four hours due to a few minor issues, but at 4:55 pm, the MR-2 lifted off. The craft had six new systems that weren’t on prior flights, including environmental controls, attitude stabilization, live retrorockets, voice communications, a closed loop abort sensing system, and a pneumatic landing bag. At 12:53 pm on January 31, 1961, Ham was placed into the spacecraft.
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