HIGH winds prevented the launch of the first mission to Pluto last night but no time can be lost in rescheduling another attempt this morning.
Flight controllers have only until February 14 to launch the probe after which atmospheric conditions will slow the flight time by up to five years. The rocket has been 17 years in development and construction and represents one of Nasa’s most ambitious missions.
The New Horizons spacecraft was due to blast off from Cape Canaveral at 1.24pm Eastern time (6.24pm GMT) but was delayed seven times by gusting winds before scientists abandoned the take-off.
Once the probe – the size of a grand piano – does get under way, aboard an Atlas V rocket that will reach record speeds of 36,000 mph, it will complete humanity’s exploration of Earth’s eight planetary siblings.
But the solar system’s final frontier will not be giving up its secrets for some time yet: the probe will take 9½ years to reach the ninth planet.
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It will take about nine hours to pass the Moon and will arrive at Jupiter in 13 months’ time, where it will use the giant planet’s gravity as a slingshot to accelerate it on its three billion-mile trip to Pluto.
On arrival in July 2015, it will survey the solar system’s smallest planetary member and its moon, Charon, before proceeding onwards into the Kuiper Belt, the solar system’s outer fringe of frozen mini-planets.
Its observations promise to reopen the long-running controversy over whether Pluto deserves planetary status, or whether it is better considered one of the larger “ice dwarves” of the Kuiper Belt. The mission should also shed light on why the bodies of the Kuiper Belt never got any larger, which could provide clues to the growth of the much bigger planets that populate the rest of the solar system.
Last night’s launch was due to proceed despite concerns that a fuel tank similar to the one used on New Horizons had failed a pressure evaluation test. An explosion could have proved catastrophic, as the spacecraft was carrying 11kg (24lb) of plutonium fuel.
Nasa and the US Department of Energy put the chances of an accident that would release plutonium at 350-1 and said the possibility that this would cause dangerous contamination was much lower.
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Several members of the family of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, including his widow, Patricia, 93, were in Florida to witness the launch.