Alice (spacecraft instrument)

Infrographic of Alice data from its 2015 encounter with Pluto on New Horizons

Alice is any one of two ultraviolet imaging spectrometers; one used on the New Horizons spacecraft and the other used on the Rosetta spacecraft.[1] Alice is a small telescope with a spectrograph and a special detector with 32 pixels each with 1024 spectral channels detecting ultraviolet light.[2] Its primary role is to determine the relative concentrations of various elements and isotopes in Pluto's atmosphere.[3]

Alice has an off-axis telescope which sends light to a Rowland-circle spectrograph, and the instrument has a field of view of 6 degrees.[4] It is designed to capture airglow and solar occultation at the same time, and has two inputs to allow this.[4]

  1. ^ "The New Horizons Alice UV Spectrometer". www.boulder.swri.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-20.
  2. ^ "New Horizons". pluto.jhuapl.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-05-01. Retrieved 2018-10-20.
  3. ^ Stern, Alan (2008). ALICE: The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph Aboard the New Horizons Pluto–Kuiper Belt Mission. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 155–187.
  4. ^ a b "ALICE: The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph aboard the New Horizons Pluto mission spacecraft". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2018-12-19.