UNESP Researcher Lead To Evaluate Risk Of Nasa's Spacecraft

Spacecraft Research

A group lead by researcher Silvia Giuliatti Winter, from Unesp Guaratinguetá, have been exploring with detailed computer simulations the possibility of debris – from dust grains to boulders – to accumulate in certain areas of outer space near Pluto or its moons. The area will be flown by the New Horizons, a spacecraft projected to study the outer Solar System, and that material can damage the equipment.

The research was the subject of an article published by the journalist Igor Zolnerkevic in the August edition of the Fapesp Research magazine. The study developed by the brazilian physicist was the first to call the attention to the risk that New Horizons (launched in 2006) faces as it will cross those areas, in 2015.

The spacecraft travels in a speed of 14 kilometers per second and its instruments can be damaged or destroyed by the collision with a single grain of sand.

"The study developed by the brazilians has been extremely relevant", stated astronomer Harold Weaver, from the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University Johns Hopkins, in the United States, one of the leaders of the New Horizons project. "We have followed their publications very closely".

Since 2010, a Unesp group has been publishing its conclusions in a series of articles in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). The most recent results, also sent to the MNRAS, were presented in July at the Pluto Conference, an event organized by the New Horizons staff, in the United States.