SAN ANTONIO – In just a few weeks, a tiny space probe launched in 2006 will finally reach it's destination -- Pluto.
The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first to fly by the dwarf planet located in the outskirts of our solar system.
In mid-July, the probe will give scientists their best view of the icy object and it's moon Charon, and will collect data that could help them understand how planets form.
A group of scientists at San Antonio's Southwest Research Institute are playing a big role in the historic mission.
"It was launched in 2006, flew by Jupiter in 2007 to get a little boost of speed and now it's almost at Pluto, so it's been traveling pretty fast," said New Horizons mission co-investigator Randy Gladstone. "It has been a long haul and it's not for people who want instant gratification."
When the New Horizons probe was launched nine years ago, Pluto was still a planet. Before the end of its first year in space, the ninth planet was demoted to dwarf status, but don't think for a second that has diminished the excitement scientists at SwRI are feeling right now.
"This is an exciting one because it's going somewhere we haven't looked at before very closely, and that it's taken so long to get there," Gladstone said. "It is the last object of this size in our solar system that's going to be looked at for the first time up close. Pictures of Pluto from the Hubble Space Telescope are just fuzzy little blobs, so we're going to turn those fuzzy blobs into real worlds that have never been seen before."
The probe is expected to make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14 and then continue on, exploring Pluto's galactic neighborhood known as the Kuiper Belt.
"Like most reconnaissance missions, this one is just flying by Pluto. It's not going to stop and go into orbit, it's just going to fly by and take as much data as it can," Gladstone said. "Then it's going to go out into the Kuiper Belt and try to look at a Kuiper Belt object, which are another class of interesting objects in the solar system, much smaller, and then it just keeps on going out into the galaxy."
The probe is the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth and is no larger than a grand piano, but its mission could produce some big results.
Two instruments on board New Horizons that will help unlock Pluto's secrets were designed, tested and built at SwRI in San Antonio.
One of those instruments is called SWAP and it's job is to measure the solar winds at Pluto.
"That tells us about how fast Pluto's atmosphere is escaping, how it interacts with the solar wind tells you how much atmosphere is coming off Pluto," Gladstone said.
Principle scientist Michael Davis was involved in the design and building of the second San Antonio built instrument known as ALICE, an ultraviolet spectrometer.
"It watches ultraviolet photons around Pluto that are caused by the sun's interaction with Pluto and it also looks at things like the sun as they set behind Pluto," Davis said. "So we will learn a lot about the atmosphere of Pluto by looking with ALICE."
Davis said his main role is making sure all the instruments are working properly and helping to analyze the data as it comes in. It's a big responsibility but he's confident everything will work as planned.
"We've had a bunch of tests along the way to make sure everything works, so I'm not too worried about it not working or something going wrong, but it will be interesting to see what comes back from it because no one's ever seen it before," Davis said. "This is the first time anyone goes to Pluto and it's great to be a part of it."
Just like everything else with the mission, scientists will have to be patient for the data to make it back to Earth.
"We're a long way out there with a tiny spacecraft," Gladstone said. "It takes about a year to get all that data back so eventually it will all come back and we'll have plenty to play with for the next 10 years."
The probe will keep traveling past Pluto and out of the solar system, only the fifth spacecraft to leave the solar system, perhaps solving more mysteries along the way.
"There's this whole new area out there called the outer solar system where the Kuiper Belt is and Pluto is a member of the Kuiper Belt, but there's thousands of them out there, and there's many, many objects the size of Pluto out there that are very interesting looking and they're a key component of the solar system," Gladstone said. "The way they were distributed helped form the entire solar system."
One thing the New Horizon's mission will not do is end the debate over whether Pluto should still be considered a planet.
"I don't see that debate going away any time soon, there's so many opinions on it," Galdstone said. "It's an interesting discussion, but it's never going to end I don't think."