NASA Hosts Briefings on Historic Mission to Pluto

[NASA News Releases <hqnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

April 9, 2015

NASA Hosts Briefings on Historic Mission to Pluto

Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in July 2015. Image Credit: NASA/Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

NASA Television will air media briefings at 1 p.m. EDT and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14, to discuss plans and related upcoming activities about the agency’s historic New Horizons spacecraft flyby of Pluto this summer.

The two briefing event, which is open to the public, will take place in the Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW in Washington.

Briefers will describe the mission’s goals, scientific objectives and encounter plans, including the types of images and other data that can be expected and when.

New Horizons will fly past Pluto on July 14. The spacecraft already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on January 19, 2006. It will pass Pluto at a speed of 31,000 mph taking thousands of images and making a wide range of other science observations. Given the distance between Pluto and Earth, data from the spacecraft during the encounter will take approximately 4.5 hours to reach our planet.

Participants for 1 p.m. briefing:

• John Grunsfeld, Science Mission Directorate associate administrator, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• James Green, director of Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters
• Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado
• William McKinnon, New Horizons co-investigator, Washington University, St. Louis
• Cathy Olkin, New Horizons Deputy project scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado

Participants for 2:30 p.m. briefing:

• James Green, director of Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters
• Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland
• Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland
• Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado

To participate by phone, reporters must contact Steve Cole at 202-358-0918 or stephen.e.cole@xxxxxxxx and provide their media affiliation no later than noon Tuesday.. Media and the public also may ask questions during the event via Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

More information about NASA’s New Horizons mission is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons

and

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu

-end-

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@xxxxxxxx

Michael Buckley
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
240-228-7536
michael.buckley@xxxxxxxxxx

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