ALICE: The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph aboard the New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission

Abstract

The New Horizons ALICE instrument is a lightweight (4.4 kg), low-power (4.4 Watt) imaging spectrograph aboard the New Horizons mission to Pluto/Charon and the Kuiper Belt. Its primary job is to determine the relative abundances of various species in Pluto's atmosphere. ALICE will also be used to search for an atmosphere around Pluto's moon, Charon, as well as the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that New Horizons hopes to fly by after Pluto-Charon, and it will make UV surface reflectivity measurements of all of these bodies as well. The instrument incorporates an off-axis telescope feeding a Rowland-circle spectrograph with a 520-1870 angstroms spectral passband, a spectral point spread function of 3-6 angstroms FWHM, and an instantaneous spatial field-of-view that is 6 degrees long. Different input apertures that feed the telescope allow for both airglow and solar occultation observations during the mission. The focal plane detector is an imaging microchannel plate (MCP) double delay-line detector with dual solar-blind opaque photocathodes (KBr and CsI) and a focal surface that matches the instrument's 15-cm diameter Rowland-circle. In what follows, we describe the instrument in greater detail, including descriptions of its ground calibration and initial in flight performance.

24 pages, 29 figures, 2 tables; To appear in a special volume of Space Science Reviews on the New Horizons mission

References in corpus (2)

• The New Horizons Pluto Kuiper belt Mission: An Overview with Historical Context
• The New Horizons Spacecraft

Cited by in corpus (33)

• The Atmosphere of Pluto as Observed by New Horizons
• Ralph: A Visible/Infrared Imager for the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt Mission
• Mean radius and shape of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons images
• Structure and Composition of Pluto's atmosphere from the New Horizons Solar Ultraviolet Occultation
• The Pluto System After New Horizons
• Haze in Pluto's Atmosphere
• New Horizons: Anticipated Scientific Investigations at the Pluto System
• The Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) on the New Horizons Mission
• The New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission
• Astronomical Observations of Volatiles on Asteroids
• New Horizons Constraints on Charon's Present Day Atmosphere
• The influence of forward-scattered light in transmission measurements of (exo)planetary atmospheres
• UV anti-reflection coatings for use in silicon detector design
• The Puzzling Detection of X-rays From Pluto by Chandra
• Discovery of carbon monoxide in the upper atmosphere of Pluto
• On the possible noble gas deficiency of Pluto's atmosphere
• A molecular wind blows out of the Kuiper belt
• The New Horizons and Hubble Space Telescope Search For Rings, Dust, and Debris in the Pluto-Charon System
• Voyager 1/UVS Lyman $\alpha$ measurements at the distant heliosphere (90-130AU): unknown source of additional emission
• Pluto's Ultraviolet Spectrum, Surface Reflectance, and Airglow Emissions
• Jupiter in the ultraviolet: acetylene and ethane abundances in the stratosphere of Jupiter from Cassini observations between 0.15 and 0.19 $\mu$m
• Astrophysics with New Horizons: Making the Most of a Generational Opportunity
• An atmospheric general circulation model for Pluto with predictions for New Horizons temperature profiles
• A bimodal distribution of haze in Pluto's atmosphere
• Backscattered solar Lyman-alpha emission as a tool for the heliospheric boundary exploration
• Stellar winds can affect gas dynamics in debris disks and create observable belt winds
• New Horizons Upper Limits on O${}_2$ in Pluto's Present Day Atmosphere
• Excess Ultraviolet Emission at High Galactic Latitudes: A New Horizons View
• Production of N2 Vegard-Kaplan and Lyman-Birge-Hopfield emissions on Pluto
• The Lyman alpha Sky as Observed by New Horizons
• Feasibility study of a mission to Sedna -- Nuclear propulsion and advanced solar sailing concepts
• On Charon's Far-Ultraviolet Surface Reflectance
• The Search for MeV Electrons 2-45 AU from the Sun with the Alice Instrument Microchannel Plate Detector Aboard New Horizons