NASA Plans Threaten the Future of New Horizons

The New Horizons mission currently flying through the Kuiper Belt could be facing an unexpected change of plans. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is soliciting input on turning the spacecraft into a heliospheric science probe. The agency wants to do it much sooner than mission planners intended. If that happens, it will stop further planned planetary exploration of objects in that distant regime of the Solar System.

The changes NASA proposes come as a surprise since the spacecraft continues to perform Kuiper Belt object observations. And, it has received a very good recent senior…