[meteorite-list] Where Is the New Horizons Centaur Stage?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:50:14 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201010282050.o9SKoEII012235_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20101028.php

Where Is the New Horizons Centaur Stage?
Alan Stern and Yanping Guo
October 28, 2010

When New Horizons launched at 2 p.m. Eastern time on January 19, 2006,
its first Atlas V stage and solid rocket boosters fell back to Earth
within minutes of launch, never entering orbit.

New Horizons then proceeded on to Earth orbit aboard its Atlas V's
powerful Centaur second stage, which then re-ignited to propel itself,
New Horizons and its STAR-48 third-stage solid rocket out of Earth orbit.

Just seconds after the Centaur stage completed that Earth-escape
maneuver, it was discarded, and New Horizons was propelled onto its
Pluto trajectory by a brief (84-second) but powerful (up to 13 G!) burn
of its third stage. That derelict third stage is now traveling out of
the solar system in the general direction of Pluto, much like New
Horizons, though it will miss Pluto by hundreds of millions of miles
because it has no ability to make the course corrections to precisely
target for Pluto as New Horizons itself has.

But what became of the also now derelict Centaur second stage New
Horizons left behind? It's orbiting between the Earth and the asteroid
belt, with a period of 2.83 years, never reaching farther than three
times as far from the Sun as the Earth does.

Orbital calculations reveal that the approximate current positions of
New Horizons, its STAR-48 third stage, and its Centaur second stage are
as shown in the figure below. The Centaur stage is now on its second
orbit of the Sun, having just passed its aphelion, or greatest distance
from the Sun, and is now approaching the orbit of Mars as it falls back
sunward.

[Graphic]
Received on Thu 28 Oct 2010 04:50:14 PM PDT