NASA NEW HORIZON COMPLETES ITS PLUTO MISSION–TO JOIN OTHER NASA PROBES SPEEDING AWAY OUT PAST THE VAST SOLAR SYSTEM INTO INTERSTELLAR SPACE; FIRST THE PIONEER 10 LAUNCHED IN 1972- EXPLORING JUPITER , SECOND PIONEER 11 LAUNCHED IN 1973-EXPLORING THE ASTEROID BELT, THIRD VOYAGER 1 LAUNCHED IN 1977–EXPLORING JUPITER AND SATURN - AND FOURTH VOYAGER 2 LAUNCHED IN 1997–EXPLORING THE SOLAR SYSTEM, AND FIFTH NEW HORIZON LAUNCHED IN 2006–EXPLORING PLUTO

The New Horizons spacecraft did what it was meant to do. It explored the unexplored dwarf planet Pluto.

So, now what?

A year from now, New Horizons will join four other unmanned spacecraft speeding out of our solar system: Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

“The Pioneers (are) now dead,” said Randii Wessen, a spokesman for NASA and an astronautical engineer who works on future mission concepts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 explored Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s and stopped sending information back to NASA in 2003 and 1995, respectively.

Now they just float in space.

“These things have heliocentric escape velocity,” Wessen said, meaning they have the ability to leave the sun’s gravitational pull. “These were given enough speed that the pull of the sun is going to slow them up but it won’t stop them from their departure from the solar system. So they’re just going to glide, dead, leaving our star forever.”

Voyagers 1 and 2, which also were launched in the 1970s, are still transmitting data back to NASA. According to Wessen, NASA gets 16 hours of information a day from the Voyagers, but they’re losing fuel and power.

“We’re slowly turning off things to reduce the electrical demand so the power we do have is used for the critical systems,” Wessen said. “But what are you going to run out of first? We’re saying 2020-2025 is when we’re going to lose them.”

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