The team behind NASA's New Horizons interplanetary space probe is now asking the space agency for another flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto. If approved, the second flyby will hover four times closer to Pluto and will have better imaging and compositional mapping technology than the first flyby in July 2015.
Second Flyby To Continue Where Predecessor Left Off
According to Space.com, the New Horizons team has already passed an extended mission proposal to NASA. The space agency is currently evaluating the request and will make its decision not later than July this year.
Alan Stern, the principal investigator of New Horizons, said the pending interplanetary space probe is called the Kuiper Belt Extended Mission. It would continue to explore and take valuable images of the Kuiper Belt and a small unexplored area known as the 2014 MU69.
"This places it in a key intermediate size regime to better understand planetary accretion," Stern explained. "And given its 4-plus-billion-year existence in cold storage so far from the sun, MU69 will be the most pristine object ever visited by any space mission."
Aside from exploring the Kuiper Belt and MU69, the second New Horizons expedition would also conduct as much as 20 distant flybys to celestial objects near Pluto. If approved, the Kuiper Belt Extended Mission will last from 2016 to 2020.
First Flyby Has Been Doing Great Thus Far
The first New Horizons flyby may have been sending back some astonishing tidbits about Pluto, but the dwarf planet isn't the only thing it has been observing. In a study published on The Astrophysical Journal Supplement, NASA indicated that New Horizons' vantage point makes it ideal for the spacecraft to study how Solar Wind works.
Data from the interplanetary space probe showed that space environment in the outer solar system is less structured than the space environment near the Sun. This is because smaller structures tend to merge together or become worn down as they travel farther from the Sun.
Additionally, scientists claimed they have identified early precursors that explain how mysterious cosmic rays are formed. It is important to know how these cosmic rays came to be, as they pose a safety threat to astronauts in orbit.
