When NASA's New Horizons sped past Pluto¹ on July 14, 2015, it took the best-ever pictures of the rocky world s surface, giving us new insight into its geology, composition and atmosphere. These stunning² images are the most famous result of New Horizons, but the spacecraft also sent back over three years worth of measurements of the solar wind the constant flow of solar particles that the sun flings out into space from a region that has been visited by only a few spacecraft. This unprecedented³ set of observations give us a peek⁴ into an almost entirely⁵ unexplored part of our space environment - filling a crucial gap between what other missions see closer to the sun and what the Voyager spacecraft see further out. A new study to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement lays out New Horizons observations of the solar wind ions that it encountered on its journey.

 

Not only does the New Horizons data provide new glimpses of the space environment of the outer solar system, but this information helps round out our growing picture of the suns influence on space, from near-Earth effects to the boundary where the solar wind meets interstellar space. The new data shows particles in the solar wind that have picked up an initial burst of energy, an acceleration⁶ boost that kicks them up just past their original speed. These particles may be the seeds of extremely energetic particles called anomalous⁷ cosmic rays. When these super-fast, energetic rays travel closer to Earth, they can pose a radiation hazard to astronauts. Further away, at lower energies, the rays are thought to play a role at shaping the boundary where the solar wind hits interstellar space - the region of our solar system that Voyager 2 is currently navigating⁸ and observing.

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