New Horizons

John H. Laporte has had a stellar career as a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., but he's feeling like Tony Mandarich -- jinxed.Mandarich landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated in April 1989, where he was celebrated as one of the best offensive linemen ever to come out of college. He never lived up to his billing and his career has been a bust ever since.Laporte, who manages New Horizons Fund, has had his share of fame, too. He was trumpeted as "domestic stock fund manager of the year" in 1995 by industry newsletter Morningstar Mutual Funds after returning a stunning 55.44 percent.

'Urbanite,' a free monthly magazine focused on urban affairs in the Baltimore area, will go out of business at the end of September, publisher Tracy Ward said Friday.   She said the print magazine now on the street is the last, and that the website will most likely go dark as of Oct. 1 "for the foreseeable future," even though she herself will probably keep working through the end of the year to tie up loose ends. Ward has owned the publication for almost a decade.   "A lot of people rallied around it," she said in telephone interview Friday afternoon.

Just after midnight Wednesday, a Maryland-built spacecraft bound for distant Pluto will soar past a key milepost in its nine-year voyage -- giant Jupiter and its turbulent system of moons and rings. It's not the first visit to Jupiter by a robotic mission from Earth. Six other spacecraft have passed by, and one, Galileo, orbited there for eight years. But scientists say their $700 million New Horizons craft will give them a new perspective on the Jovian system and on secrets that were inaccessible to prior missions.

Anniversary show: McBride Gallery presents its 30th anniversary show with more than 100 new works of paintings, graphics and sculpture on display through June 30 at 215 Main St., Annapolis. A reception will be held 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, June 13. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, noon to 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Information: 410-267-7077. Anniversary show McBride Gallery presents its 30th anniversary show with more than 100 new works of paintings, graphics and sculpture on display through June 30 at 215 Main St., Annapolis.

T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. said yesterday that it has reopened its New Horizons Fund, which had been closed to new investors for nearly six years, in an effort to staunch an outflow of money. Although New Horizons has grown to $4.8 billion in assets under management from $2.9 billion when it was closed in June 1996, withdrawals have outpaced new investment in three of the past five years and in this year's first quarter. The fund has had $700 million in net outflows this year, said John H. Laporte, who has managed New Horizons since 1987.

Like Columbus cruising the Canary Islands en route to the New World, the Maryland-run New Horizons spacecraft got a close look at Jupiter last February on its way to a 2015 first date with the dwarf planet Pluto. Data from the flyby, to be reported in this week's edition of the journal Science, provide new glimpses of the bizarre Jovian system - including eruptions on the volcanic moon Io that hurl a ton of sulfur dioxide into space every second, and huge belches of electrically charged particles that break from Jupiter's grip like blobs in a lava lamp.

'Urbanite,' a free monthly magazine focused on urban affairs in the Baltimore area, will go out of business at the end of September, publisher Tracy Ward said Friday.   She said the print magazine now on the street is the last, and that the website will most likely go dark as of Oct. 1 "for the foreseeable future," even though she herself will probably keep working through the end of the year to tie up loose ends. Ward has owned the publication for almost a decade.   "A lot of people rallied around it," she said in telephone interview Friday afternoon.

Sometime around 6 a.m. today, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was to soar past the orbit of Mars at 13 miles per second, en route to a rendezvous with the planet Pluto in the summer of 2015. The fastest spacecraft ever rocketed from Earth, New Horizons made the flight from Earth in just 78 days, according to officials at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab near Laurel. APL designed the mission and is managing the flight for NASA. Because of the two planets' current positions in their orbits around the sun, New Horizons is actually still closer to Earth (51 million miles)

Calling it "the best news any Pluto fan could hope for," scientists working on NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto have been cheered this month by the first images from their spacecraft's high-resolution camera. All seven instruments on the mission - the one intended to produce the first close look at the "dwarf planet" in 2015 - have proven they are working as expected. The fastest spacecraft ever built, New Horizons is 322 million miles from the sun, moving through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter at 14.45 miles per second.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The fastest spacecraft ever created is speeding toward the solar system's most distant planet, where it will study Pluto, its moon and the icy objects in the nearby Kuiper Belt. The $700 million New Horizons was developed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and will be controlled from the mission operations center on its Howard County campus near Laurel. A Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket blasted off yesterday at 2 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, launching New Horizons on the start of its 3 billion-mile journey.

O n Tuesday, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be closer to Pluto than to Earth. The $700 million mission was designed and is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab . Launched in 2006, the craft is now traveling at 36,900 miles an hour relative to the sun. It's due to pass Uranus' orbit in 2011, Neptune's in August 2014. It will speed by Pluto in July 2015, the first craft from Earth ever to visit the icy world and its moons - Charon, Hydra and Nix. > Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.

Alice Bowman is the mission operations manager (M.O.M.) for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, now on course for a rendezvous with the (former) planet Pluto in 2015. It's her job to watch over the health of the spacecraft, to manage continuing upgrades and changes to the software for its support systems and scientific instruments during its nine-year voyage across the solar system. From the mission control room at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel, she and her team receive weekly signals from New Horizons reporting that all is well or, on occasion, that something needs their attention.

Like Columbus cruising the Canary Islands en route to the New World, the Maryland-run New Horizons spacecraft got a close look at Jupiter last February on its way to a 2015 first date with the dwarf planet Pluto. Data from the flyby, to be reported in this week's edition of the journal Science, provide new glimpses of the bizarre Jovian system - including eruptions on the volcanic moon Io that hurl a ton of sulfur dioxide into space every second, and huge belches of electrically charged particles that break from Jupiter's grip like blobs in a lava lamp.

Just after midnight Wednesday, a Maryland-built spacecraft bound for distant Pluto will soar past a key milepost in its nine-year voyage -- giant Jupiter and its turbulent system of moons and rings. It's not the first visit to Jupiter by a robotic mission from Earth. Six other spacecraft have passed by, and one, Galileo, orbited there for eight years. But scientists say their $700 million New Horizons craft will give them a new perspective on the Jovian system and on secrets that were inaccessible to prior missions.

Calling it "the best news any Pluto fan could hope for," scientists working on NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto have been cheered this month by the first images from their spacecraft's high-resolution camera. All seven instruments on the mission - the one intended to produce the first close look at the "dwarf planet" in 2015 - have proven they are working as expected. The fastest spacecraft ever built, New Horizons is 322 million miles from the sun, moving through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter at 14.45 miles per second.

Sometime around 6 a.m. today, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was to soar past the orbit of Mars at 13 miles per second, en route to a rendezvous with the planet Pluto in the summer of 2015. The fastest spacecraft ever rocketed from Earth, New Horizons made the flight from Earth in just 78 days, according to officials at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab near Laurel. APL designed the mission and is managing the flight for NASA. Because of the two planets' current positions in their orbits around the sun, New Horizons is actually still closer to Earth (51 million miles)

O n Tuesday, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be closer to Pluto than to Earth. The $700 million mission was designed and is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab . Launched in 2006, the craft is now traveling at 36,900 miles an hour relative to the sun. It's due to pass Uranus' orbit in 2011, Neptune's in August 2014. It will speed by Pluto in July 2015, the first craft from Earth ever to visit the icy world and its moons - Charon, Hydra and Nix. > Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.

For scientists at a biotechnology firm in Columbia, it was graduate school all over again.The lights in the lab burned 24 hours in midsummer as the staff at New Horizons Diagnostics Corp. pulled numerous all-nighter sessions to perfect a testing kit now being used by U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia to detect the presence of a biological weapon.Last June, the company signed a contract to supply the U.S. Army with biological detection systems."In mid-July, we got a call from Fort Detrick saying they needed everything done within three weeks to ship the kits out in August," said Larry Loomis, president of New Horizons.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The fastest spacecraft ever created is speeding toward the solar system's most distant planet, where it will study Pluto, its moon and the icy objects in the nearby Kuiper Belt. The $700 million New Horizons was developed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and will be controlled from the mission operations center on its Howard County campus near Laurel. A Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket blasted off yesterday at 2 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, launching New Horizons on the start of its 3 billion-mile journey.

Who knew that a little rain in Maryland could have consequences as far away as Florida? Or Pluto? NASA was forced yesterday to scrub the planned launch of its $700 million New Horizons mission - from Florida to Pluto - after the power went out during a rainstorm at the spacecraft's operations center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel. What? No backup power? Of course there was. This is a NASA program. The control center's emergency generator kicked on immediately.