New Horizons Nears Pluto

[Zippyjuan]

First human craft to visit the planet. Even Hubble photos have been blury blobs so it is the best look we have ever had of the now "former" planet. It reaches closest approach on July 14th after a journey of nine years. Radio signals the satellite sends back at the speed of light will take four and a half hours to reach Earth. It is also the fastest moving spacecraft ever made.

http://www.coloradanmagazine.org/201...yage-to-pluto/

Most functions have been sleeping during the long journey to save power. It awoke this week to snap a few photos.


http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...e-new-horizons

[Origanalist]

I have been checking in on this daily, this should be pretty cool.

[acptulsa]

41,000 miles an hour, and still it couldn't reach Pluto while it was still a planet.

[Origanalist]

[Zippyjuan]

41,000 miles an hour, and still it couldn't reach Pluto while it was still a planet.

The status was changed just months after New Horizons was launched (September 2006). What started as the historic first trip to our farthest known planet suddenly became a very long sightseeing trip to a space rock.

[Ronin Truth]

Just a fly by or is it going into orbit? (I hope.)

[Zippyjuan]

Apparently a fly-by. Next will be portions of the Kuiper Belt. They are looking at other possible targets in the vicinity but fuel will be limited for changing directions.

[Ronin Truth]

Apparently a fly-by. Next will be portions of the Kuiper Belt. They are looking at other possible targets in the vicinity but fuel will be limited for changing directions.

Kuiper Belt then the Oort Cloud, bye-bye 'New Horizons'.

Would a couple of years of orbiting Pluto first, just absolutely kill NASA?

[Zippyjuan]

Newer picture of Pluto:


http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33459476

[fisharmor]

Would a couple of years of orbiting Pluto first, just absolutely kill NASA?

In order to do that, it might have taken 30 or more years to get there.
The trip took 9 years, and the only reason it took so short a time is because they slingshot the craft past the moon and also Jupiter.
In order to slow down to the point of being able to orbit Pluto, the craft would have had to go much slower, and would have needed to carry enough fuel to slow itself down toward the end of the journey.
And there would have been no continuing after that.

As it is, we're going to get snapshot data from Pluto (which is still miles ahead of what we've had for 85 years), and then it will target other objects and go get data on those, too.

[Zippyjuan]

Another problem is its small size and mass which means less gravity to capture an object like New Horizons into orbit. That is why approach speed to achieve orbit must be slow- it is too easy to just fly by. Size comparisons:



http://snowbrains.com/pluto-why-its-no-longer-a-planet/

- Pluto has a relatively low mass of less than 1/5 the mass of our moon and 0.00218 the mass of Earth

Pluto’s size vs the Earth
Pluto’s size vs the Earth

- One of Pluto’s moons, Charon, has a mass of about half of Pluto leading some scientists to believe that it’s a binary system with it’s center of mass somewhere in between the two objects.



MORE PLUTO FACTS:

- Pluto has 5 moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Vulcan, Cerberus

- “A number of scientists hold that Pluto should continue to be classified as a planet, and that other dwarf planets should be added to the roster of planets along with Pluto.” – wikipedia

- In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons will be our first close look at Pluto and its moons as it flies by the dwarf planet.

- Pluto may not have been formed in our solar system. Many scientists believe that it was essentially an asteroid that was caught by the sun’s gravity and has been hanging out ever since.

- Pluto was discovered in 1930 BY Clyde W. Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona and was initially thought to be about the size of Earth. The size of Pluto continually went down over the years until it got kicked out.

[Zippyjuan]

Methane has been detected. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-hori...-sunrisesunset

Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows. The infrared spectrometer on NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface; Earth-based astronomers first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.

“We already knew there was methane on Pluto, but these are our first detections,” said Will Grundy, the New Horizons Surface Composition team leader with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Soon we will know if there are differences in the presence of methane ice from one part of Pluto to another.”

Methane (chemical formula CH4) is an odorless, colorless gas that is present underground and in the atmosphere on Earth. On Pluto, methane may be primordial, inherited from the solar nebula from which the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. Methane was originally detected on Pluto’s surface by a team of ground-based astronomers led by New Horizons team member Dale Cruikshank, of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California.

[Henry Rogue]

Hope Geraldo isn't doing a live tv broadcast.

[Jan2017]

Apparently a fly-by. Next will be portions of the Kuiper Belt. They are looking at other possible targets in the vicinity but fuel will be limited for changing directions.

Fly-by and now on most optimal trajectory without change possible - they could have used up fuel to have made a change by last Saturday
if it looked like there would be risk of collision with dust or anything at its 30,800 mph speed.

Launched in 2006, now unmanned and manned spaceflights - especially with ion propulsion - will be aimed far ahead of the future orbit/path
of the planet/dwarf/moon/asteroid - and slowed down slowly waiting for the planet/other to catch up to it - so a bump into orbit takes little energy if any.

Might be among the very last of the old-fashioned "fly-bys" . . .

[Suzanimal]

Still looks like a planet to me.

[Origanalist]

Still looks like a planet to me.

I can't wait for better resolutions, Pluto looks pretty crazy so far.

[Occam's Banana]

They better watch out for Fungi from Yuggoth ...

[Suzanimal]

They better watch out for Fungi from Yuggoth ...

Looks like a fun gi, Cthulhu approves.

[Ronin Truth]

Still looks like a planet to me.

With moons, go figure.


(PSSSSST, WE can still call it a planet if we want to.)

[Zippyjuan]

Starting to see more details of Pluto as New Horizons gets closer. Looks like a still from a 1920's sci-fi movie.



http://www.ibtimes.com/new-horizons-...atures-2004284

Because of its distance, it takes the light of the sun about five and a half hours to reach it. Because of that distance (roughly 40 times farther from the sun than we are), it only gets 1/1552 of the sunlight we receive. http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2476.html The mid- day sun would look 25 times brighter than the full moon appears to us.

[Suzanimal]

With moons, go figure.


(PSSSSST, WE can still call it a planet if we want to.)

[Zippyjuan]

[Occam's Banana]

Starting to see more details of Pluto as New Horizons gets closer. Looks like a still from a 1920's sci-fi movie.

Fungi from Yuggoth, I'm tellin' ya!

If the Mi-go get their claws on that thing, we could have a whole "V'ger"-type situation on our hands.

This ain't gonna end well ...

[Origanalist]

Starting to see more details of Pluto as New Horizons gets closer. Looks like a still from a 1920's sci-fi movie.



http://www.ibtimes.com/new-horizons-...atures-2004284

Because of its distance, it takes the light of the sun about five and a half hours to reach it. Because of that distance (roughly 40 times farther from the sun than we are), it only gets 1/1552 of the sunlight we receive. http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2476.html The mid- day sun would look 25 times brighter than the full moon appears to us.

[Suzanimal]

Yes, it does count for something.

Pluto Is Bigger Than We Thought

Pluto, our solar system’s lovably puny outlier and everyone’s favorite demoted planet, is less puny than scientists predicted.

NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons probe traveled over 3 billion miles in a decade to bring us this new info. Apparently, Pluto’s diameter is closer to around 1,473 miles (2,370 km), which is about 50 miles (80 km) more than previous estimates.

“A ha!” you say. “Give Pluto back its membership! It’s a real planet after all!” I mean, if it’s bigger, that counts for something, right?

...

http://gizmodo.com/pluto-is-bigger-t...ght-1717556241

[Ronin Truth]

Yes, it does count for something.

Science bureaucracies hate to, and most usually refuse to, admit when they are WRONG. Just gotta wait for the old fogies and the old farts to die off.

Is this a great system of searching out nature's truths, or what?

[Origanalist]

[wizardwatson]

With moons, go figure.


(PSSSSST, WE can still call it a planet if we want to.)

I'm actually more offended now by the de-planetizing now that I know how little we know/knew about Pluto.

Am I the only one who assumed we actually knew how big it was and what it looked like through a telescope? It's weird that we don't even have good pictures of it but we're always seeing galaxies and whatnot.

Now I'm making abortion analogies in my head.

"Oh, it's not a planet, it's just like a bunch of other rocks. I wouldn't call it a "planet" exactly."

Now I'm reading in the news we even had the SIZE wrong? Now we have to adjust our assumed density?

Very "emperor has no clothes" moment for me and our science Gods.

[Ronin Truth]

I'm actually more offended now by the de-planetizing now that I know how little we know/knew about Pluto.

Am I the only one who assumed we actually knew how big it was and what it looked like through a telescope? It's weird that we don't even have good pictures of it but we're always seeing galaxies and whatnot.

Now I'm making abortion analogies in my head.

"Oh, it's not a planet, it's just like a bunch of other rocks. I wouldn't call it a "planet" exactly."

Now I'm reading in the news we even had the SIZE wrong? Now we have to adjust our assumed density?

Very "emperor has no clothes" moment for me and our science Gods.

Pluto will just continue to stay out there and keep on doing it's thing, regardless of what some group of ignorant humans on this particular mud ball have chosen to classify and label it. <shrug!>

[Jan2017]

Flyby at distance of a mere 7,750 miles should have occurred an hour ago . . . 5:49am mountain time with
the University of Colorado Boulder project scientists and others around the USA getting the data streams today . . .



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