Ralph: A Visible/Infrared Imager for the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt Mission
arXiv:0709.4281 · doi:10.1007/s11214-008-9375-7
Abstract
The New Horizons instrument named Ralph is a visible/near infrared multi-spectral imager and a short wavelength infrared spectral imager. It is one of the core instruments on New Horizons, NASA's first mission to the Pluto/Charon system and the Kuiper Belt. Ralph combines panchromatic and color imaging capabilities with IR imaging spectroscopy. Its primary purpose is to map the surface geology and composition of these objects, but it will also be used for atmospheric studies and to map the surface temperature. It is a compact, low-mass (10.5 kg), power efficient (7.1 W peak), and robust instrument with good sensitivity and excellent imaging characteristics. Other than a door opened once in flight, it has no moving parts. These characteristics and its high degree of redundancy make Ralph ideally suited to this long-duration flyby reconnaissance mission.
18 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables; To appear in a special volume of Space Science Reviews on the New Horizons mission
References in corpus (4)
Cited by in corpus (25)
- Initial results from the New Horizons exploration of 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt Object
- The Geology and Geophysics of Kuiper Belt Object (486958) Arrokoth
- Haze in Pluto's Atmosphere
- Color, Composition, and Thermal Environment of Kuiper Belt Object (486958) Arrokoth
- New Horizons: Anticipated Scientific Investigations at the Pluto System
- Pluto's Haze as a Surface Material
- Formation of Charon's Red Poles From Seasonally Cold-Trapped Volatiles
- On the Origin and Thermal Stability of Arrokoths and Plutos Ices
- Overview of the New Horizons Science Payload
- Jupiter Science Enabled by ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer
- Compositional Mapping of Europa using MCMC Modelling of Near-IR VLT/SPHERE and Galileo/NIMS Observations
- Large-scale cryovolcanic resurfacing on Pluto
- CDIM: Cosmic Dawn Intensity Mapper Final Report
- The New Horizons and Hubble Space Telescope Search For Rings, Dust, and Debris in the Pluto-Charon System
- A Search for Temporal Changes on Pluto and Charon
- Evidence for Possible Clouds in Pluto's Present Day Atmosphere
- A bimodal distribution of haze in Pluto's atmosphere
- Distribution and Energy Balance of Pluto's Nitrogen Ice, as seen by New Horizons in 2015
- Surface Composition of Pluto's Kiladze Area and Relationship to Cryovolcanism
- Uncertainty in Grain Size Estimations of Volatiles on Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs)
- A machine-generated catalogue of Charon's craters and implications for the Kuiper belt
- Pluto Geologic Map: Use of Crater Data to Understand Age Relationships
- New Investigations of Dark Floored Pits in the Volatile Ice of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto
- Investigating the extent of bladed terrain on Pluto via photometric surface roughness
- Observations of Uranus at High Phase Angle as Seen by New Horizons