New Horizons Pluto Flyby

This build is of the famed New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto and Chiron in 2015. Launched in 2006, this spacecraft has taken hundreds of photos of both Pluto and Chiron along its journey to the Kuiper belt at the edge of our solar system. Along the way, New Horizons completed many experiments with its massive array of scientific equipment. Once this craft reached the Kuiper belt, it completed a flyby of the asteroid Arrokoth and became the most distant object ever explored up close. These groundbreaking missions are just a few reasons I believe this would make a fantastic set to add to any space display.

 

In this model, I tried to include many of the primary instruments of the spacecraft in as close an approximation as I could. These include the large Rex (Radio-Science Experiment), the PEPSSI (Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation), the Ralph-Visible and Infrared Imager/Spectrometer, and especially the LORRI (Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager) which was used to take most photos of Pluto. All of these instruments are vital to not only nailing the design but were paramount in completing its missions.

 

I have always been interested in space and space crafts, so the decision to design and build New Horizons was easy. It is one of many of my favorite NASA missions (Kepler, Apollo, Voyager, Juno, to name a few) and is something I think deserves a good quality model to stand along with the other Creator and Ideas space sets. Technically, this isn’t the first model of New Horizons I have built. The first is very similar to the model being submitted. The original is weaker in a few areas both in color choices and overall design. However, this newer model is more complete, has better part choices, and has a better building plan from start to finish. For these reasons I believe it is a structurally sound model. I am also proud of the color choices and gradients introduced in this new model. My previous one included a color scheme of yellow and light blue-ish grey while this new one included more yellow and pearl gold accents to better represent the actual colors of the craft.

 

To build New Horizons meant I had to build Pluto too (You can’t show the mission without showing the objective). The Pluto base was an idea I had while I was redesigning the original New Horizons model and it felt just right to add along with it. I wanted to try and represent a flyby of the New Horizons past Pluto while also displaying most of the features on the craft in the angled position. The connection between New Horizons and its base is designed to be easy in adding and removing the craft at will. The base is also separable from the Pluto top piece for the potential of changing out or replacing of the planetoid/asteroid you want to represent.

 

Information presented in this idea was found at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/new-horizons/in-depth/

And includes a breakdown of the missions, interactive charts of where it is and a 3D model of the craft.

The Images included on the second image are photoshopped in Gimp to represent the official NASA renders of New Horizons Flyby of Pluto

Pluto Image: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/795/the-rich-color-variations-of-plu...

The Space background: https://kattrahill.com/lunar-psychophysics