I love this stuff. ;-)
"Last month, NASA launched the New Horizons space probe on a 9.5 year, 4.92 billion mile voyage to explore Pluto, its moon, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt (a ring of more than 100,000 small planetoids circling the sun at roughly the same distance as Pluto). Launching in January let NASA take advantage of a close flyby of Jupiter to slingshot the craft toward its destination and shave three to five years off the travel time.
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The piano-sized New Horizons probe weighs about 1,054 lb, which includes 170 lb of propellant for its thrusters and 66 lb of scientific instruments. It went into space atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas V-551 rocket with five solidrocket boosters, a Centaur second stage, and a Boeing Star-48B solidrocket third stage. The Atlas alone, NASA's brawniest launcher, puts out almost 2.5 million pounds of thrust. Altogether, the combined thrust pushed the satellite to 36,000 mph, making it the fastest spacecraft ever. It passed the Moon's orbit in 9 hr, a trip that took Apollo missions three days. The craft will pass Jupiter in 13 months, a journey that took the two most recent Jovian probes, Galileo and Cassini, six and four years, respectively. And after it accelerates around Jupiter (next year), it will be traveling at 47,000 mph (13 miles/sec)."
http://machinedesign.com/ASP/viewSel...UE&CatID=3
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