Maryland Senator Barbara A. Mikulski will join NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and Ralph Semmel, director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland today for a briefing on the status of the New Horizons Pluto mission and a tour of the mission operations center.
The briefing and tour will be closed to the media, but will be followed by a media availability with Mikulski, Newman, Grunsfeld and Semmel from 12:40 to 1 p.m. Media interested in participating should arrive at APL’s Kossiakoff Center, located at 11100 Johns Hopkins Road. For more information, contact the New Horizons media center at 240-228-8532.
New Horizons is the first mission to the Kuiper Belt, a gigantic zone of icy bodies and mysterious small objects orbiting beyond Neptune. This region also is known as the third zone of our solar system, beyond the inner rocky planets and outer gas giants.
APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
APL media and logistics information is available online at:
http://www.jhuapl.edu/MediaResources/
For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
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