Industry News

One of the applications Luxel is best known for is creating filters for the aerospace industry, and we are very proud of our flight history that spans over 40 years. For us, it’s exciting to see our filters in action as instruments get used in space.

One such mission is just starting to collect data for its primary research objectives of better characterizing Pluto and its moons. After being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and Southwest Research Institute, the NASA Spacecraft New Horizons launched in January 2006.

Several of our LUXFilm® Polyimide/Carbon and LUXFilm® Polyimide/Aluminum filters are on board as part of the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) instrument in the plasma and high energy particle spectrometer suite (PAM).

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  Artist rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft.  Image credit:  NASA

In early 2007, New Horizons got a gravity-assist from Jupiter, taking the opportunity to produce some of the best-ever images of the planet and its moons while also studying the atmosphere and the rings around the planet. Now, in early 2015, the spacecraft is approaching Pluto, and it will make its closest pass to the dwarf planet in mid-July. In the last few weeks, the PEPSSI instrument has been active sampling the solar winds and other aspects of the space weather environment in Kuniper Belt near Pluto. They’re detecting mostly protons and electrons in the solar wind, but also trace amounts of helium and oxygen ions. Since the solar wind is very weak right now, scientists are eager for the extra time this will give them to study Pluto’s atmosphere on the day of the spacecraft’s closest approach. PEPSSI will also be involved in the atmospheric sampling. After the prime portion of the mission ends later this year, New Horizons will go on to study one or two other objects in the Kuniper Belt before continuing into the outer heliosphere.

 

For more information on this mission, visit the NASA New Horizons page.

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