The New Horizons mission to Pluto: Advances in telecommunications system design

Abstract This paper presents the RF telecommunications system designed for the New Horizons mission, NASA's planned mission to Pluto, with focus on new technologies developed to meet mission requirements. These technologies include an advanced digital receiver—a mission-enabler for its low DC power consumption at 2.6 W secondary power. The receiver is one-half of a card-based transceiver that is incorporated with other spacecraft functions into an integrated electronics module, providing further reductions in mass and power. Other developments include extending APL's long and successful flight history in ultrastable oscillators (USOs) with an updated design for lower DC power. These USOs offer frequency stabilities to 1 part in 10 13 , stabilities necessary to support New Horizons’ uplink radio science experiment. In antennas, the 2.1 m high-gain antenna makes use of shaped sub- and main reflectors to improve system performance and achieve a gain approaching 44 dBic. New Horizons would also be the first deep-space mission to fly a regenerative ranging system, offering up to a 30 dB performance improvement over sequential ranging, especially at long ranges. The paper will provide an overview of the current system design and development and performance details on the new technologies mentioned above. Other elements of the telecommunications system will also be discussed. Note: New Horizons is NASA's planned mission to Pluto, and has not been approved for launch. All representations made in this paper are contingent on a decision by NASA to go forward with the preparation for and launch of the mission.