New Horizons May Be Safe… For Now

In my last entry, I talked about how NASA was floating a weird proposal. In essence, the agency wanted to change the New Horizons mission from a Kuiper Belt explorer to doing solely heliophysics.

This, while the spacecraft is still in the Kuiper Belt, exploring this largely unexplored part of the Solar System. Oh, and the proposal also suggested replacing the entire science team (that built and knows the spacecraft). Or, at least forcing them to recompete for their jobs.

The original proposal had all this happening in late 2024, leaving the team little time to respond to the suggested changes.

Well, That Didn’t Happen, Exactly

After several months of speculation, a letter-writing campaign, and a Change.org petition, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate last week announced that the mission would continue largely as is. It would keep exploring the Kuiper Belt with funding guaranteed until the spacecraft leaves that region sometime around 2029. No word on whether the team would be replaced, but since the announcement suggested that mission operations would remain as they are, the team may be safe. The announcement was interesting for what it didn’t mention.

I guess this is good news, but I remain skeptical until I hear from the team that they’re still employed doing the science they planned more than two decades ago. There’s still time for them to do planetary science, as well as heliophysics (which it’s been doing all along). And, when the spacecraft leaves the Kuiper Belt, it’ll still have enough fuel and power to measure what lies beyond.

I still wonder why NASA went through this whole exercise of threatening a working mission like it did. It’s a mystery, for now. But, we can at least hope that maybe the spacecraft will deliver us more looks at Kuiper Belt objects. The team is still looking for a flyby target, so let’s hope for the best.

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