Becca Sepan

 Abstract: When New Horizons (NH) encountered the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, it was the most distant spacecraft to complete its primary science mission at 4.77 billion kilometers (nearly 3 billion miles) from Earth. Many challenges were successftitlefully met to accomplish that encounter. Following the Pluto system encounter the New Horizons spacecraft is still healthy and the team is ready for new challenges. NASA approved a mission extension to study other objects in the Kuiper Belt. The pinnacle of the New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission was an encounter with cold classical Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, informally named Ultima Thule, with closest approach ringing in the New Year on January 1, 2019. Ultima Thule was only discovered in 2014 so little was known about the object in advance yet for this encounter the New Horizons team had significantly less time to plan and build the encounter command sequence. The spacecraft wasn’t able to resolve the object until days before closest approach so navigators had to determine under significant time pressure if a course adjustment and/or parameter updates were needed. Telemetry rates were much lower and the round-trip light time was significantly higher at Ultima Thule compared to at Pluto. An ambitious radio science experiment, the most distant planetary radar measurement ever conducted from Earth, was attempted with six simultaneous uplinks sent from the Deep Space Network (DSN) to reflect off the surface of MU69 for detection by the Radio science EXperiment onboard NH

Biography:

Biography: Becca Sepan is a Mission Operations Communications Analyst and Flight Controller at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physic Lab (JHU/APL) for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. As the Communications Analyst, Becca works with the RF Communications Engineers and the DSN to develop command sequences for the spacecraft and coordinate ground configurations, particularly for the Radio Science EXperiment (REX), and to troubleshoot any anomalies related to the communications system. As a Flight Controller, she interfaces with the DSN to send commands to and receive telemetry from New Horizons. Becca is also working on Mission Operations for the proposed Dragonfly mission to explore prebiotic chemistry via rotorcraft on Titan. NASA will announce in July if that mission is selected to fly. Earlier in her career Becca worked on operations for the MESSENGER spacecraft which completed its mission at Mercury in 2015. She earned her Master’s degree in aerospace engineering while working on Earth Observing missions at NASA Goddard which was her first job in the field after graduating with her BS in aerospace engineering from The University of Virginia.