Scientists criticise Nasa for halting Kuiper Belt mission

A dispute has arisen between US space officials and scientists after Nasa decided to halt funding of New Horizons spacecraft that was designed to carry out a study of the Kuiper Belt — regarding the decision as "misguided and unfortunate".

It is said that the spacecraft could have travelled more than 5 billion miles through space and could have reached the edge of the solar system.

Alan Stern, New Horizons's principal investigator stated that "scientifically, this is a mistake," with other experts backing him.

According to Nasa, it is not going to shut down the spacecraft completely but will provide some funding so that the craft can continue to study space weather and other phenomena. However, the agency also underlined that the aim of the spacecraft — to study the planet's composition — will be stopped.

Kuiper Belt — named after the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who proposed its existence in 1951 — is a doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects that were left behind from the creation of the sun's planets billions of years ago. 

The scientists could not reach it because of its remote distance. New Horizons was built to reach that point.

The spacecraft — launched in 20-6 from Cape Canaveral — reached Pluto — which is the largest object from Kuiper Belt — on July 2015. It sent data about its flyby back to Earth.

After passing by Pluto and its moon, the spacecraft New Horizons fell into the Kuiper Belt and came close to Arrokoth in 2019 — the most distant and ancient object ever explored by a space probe.

The images showing Arrokoth — a Native American term that means "sky" in the Powhatan-Algonquin language — consisted of two lobes that probably formed separately before gently merging within a cloud of particles early in the history of our solar system.

Michele Bannister, a planetary scientist at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in the journal Nature last week: "It taught us so much about fundamental properties of planetary formation. It was completely transformational."

This point was backed by Stern, who said: "The Kuiper belt is made up of planetesimals, the building blocks of planets. Thanks to the data that was sent back by New Horizons, we now understand the way that these building blocks combine and coalesce and start the process of planetary formation. This is fundamentally important to understanding our own solar system and planets around other stars."

As per the schedule, New Horizons is to take at least four to five years to conclude its journey through the Kuiper Belt in which it was hoped to rendezvous with another planetesimal like Arrokoth.

"It is extremely hard to find another suitable object to get near but we have been trying really hard to find one," said Stern.

"I think there is some frustration at Nasa that we don’t have another flyby target as yet, and I understand that frustration. We are working as hard as we can to put that right but it is such a tough problem. However, cutting off our funding only guarantees that there will never be another flyby target."

The cost of building and flying to Pluto has been more than $800m. Mission control costs have come in at about $10m a year.

Several million dollars are likely to be cut when the probe’s focus is shifted to heliophysics — the physics of the sun and its connection with the solar system — instead of its actual aim.

Stern added: "It's a false economy. New Horizons can still do great science for the rest of its time in the Kuiper belt. But stopping it next year is both premature scientifically and unwise from the standpoint of fiscal policy. I am very concerned about this, and it is fair to say that I am in good company."