/sci/ - Science & Math

NASA to extend New Horizons mission through late 2020s

https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-extend-new-horizons-mission-through-late-2020s/
> WASHINGTON — NASA has agreed to extend operations of its New Horizons spacecraft through late this decade to support “multidisciplinary” science that could include another Kuiper Belt object flyby.
> NASA announced Sept. 29 that it would extend New Horizons, currently approved for operations through the end of fiscal year 2024, until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is expected around the end of the decade. The focus of the mission, starting in fiscal year 2025, will be collecting heliophysics data as the spacecraft heads out of the solar system.
> The future of New Horizons has been in doubt after NASA elected to extend the mission, part of NASA’s planetary science division, only through 2024, proposing to then transfer it to NASA’s heliophysics division. That move was rejected by the mission’s principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who argued that the move would rule out any further work in planetary science by the original mission team.
> NASA said that the new extended mission will be jointly managed by NASA’s heliophysics and planetary science divisions, but “primarily” funded by planetary science.
> NASA spent $9.5 million on New Horizons in 2022 and proposed spending $9.7 million on the mission in its fiscal year 2024 budget proposal.