# New Horizons Pluto Mission update thread



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 7, 2015)

The build up has started (for me) and yes i get excited by stuff like this. 

*Nasa reveals new images of Pluto's four 'alien black spots' as it says New Horizons probe is back in action*

*Nasa lost touch with the space probe for 89 minutes on Saturday 4 July*
*New Horizons' autopilot put spacecraft's main computer into 'safe mode'*
*Scientists leading the mission hope to have it fully operation by 7 July*
*New Horizons is due to be the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto on July 14 *
Nasa scientists say they have fixed a glitch that saw them lose contact with the New Horizon’s space probe just days before its close encounter with Pluto - and have released a new image of four unknown 'black spots' on the dwarf planet.

The spacecraft entered ‘safe mode’, cutting contact with the Earth over the weekend, due to a timing flaw as it performed operations ahead of its fly past Pluto next week.

Scientists leading the mission say they hope to return the space probe to full operation by Tuesday and the mission to fly within 7,750 miles (12,500km) of Pluto on July 14 will go ahead as planned







'The computer was trying to do two things at the same time, and the two were more than the processor could handle at the same time, so the processor overloaded,' said Nasa's Glen Fountain, explaining the loss of contact.

'We knew it would take about an hour for the spacecraft to transmit to Earth from the backup computer.
'We started looking for signal on backup side, and found it when expected.
'We looked at data, figured out what was happening, and started to put a plan in place to recover.
The space agency released these never before seen images of the dwarf planet, the last taken before the team lost contact.
'These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world,' Nasa said before the briefing on the mission.
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that sent New Horizons into safe mode.





The left image shows, on the right side of the disk, a large bright area on the hemisphere of Pluto that will be seen in close-up by New Horizons on July 14.

The three images together show the full extent of a continuous swath of dark terrain that wraps around much of Pluto’s equatorial region.
The western end of the swath (right image) breaks up into a series of striking dark regularly-spaced spots, each hundreds of miles in size, which were first detected in New Horizons images taken in late June.
Intriguing details are beginning to emerge in the bright material north of the dark region, in particular a series of bright and dark patches that are conspicuous just below the center of the disk in the right image.
In all three black-and-white views, the apparent jagged bottom edge of Pluto is the result of image processing. The inset shows Pluto’s orientation, illustrating its north pole, equator, and central meridian running from pole to pole.
The colour version of the July 3 LORRI image was created by adding color data from the Ralph instrument gathered earlier in the mission.
The left image shows, on the right side of the disk, a large bright area on the hemisphere of Pluto that will be seen in close-up by New Horizons on July 14.
The three images together show the full extent of a continuous swath of dark terrain that wraps around much of Pluto’s equatorial region.
The western end of the swath (right image) breaks up into a series of striking dark regularly-spaced spots, each hundreds of miles in size, which were first detected in New Horizons images taken in late June.
Intriguing details are beginning to emerge in the bright material north of the dark region, in particular a series of bright and dark patches that are conspicuous just below the center of the disk in the right image.
In all three black-and-white views, the apparent jagged bottom edge of Pluto is the result of image processing. The inset shows Pluto’s orientation, illustrating its north pole, equator, and central meridian running from pole to pole.

The colour version of the July 3 LORRI image was created by adding color data from the Ralph instrument gathered earlier in the mission.


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 7, 2015)

> 'The computer was trying to do two things at the same time, and the two were more than the processor could handle at the same time, so the processor overloaded,' said Nasa's Glen Fountain, explaining the loss of contact.



Nasa needs to learn to multithread.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 7, 2015)

The spacecraft carries two computer systems, the Command and Data Handling system and the Guidance and Control processor. Each of the two systems is duplicated for redundancy, for a total of four computers. The processor used is the Mongoose-V, a 12 MHzradiation-hardened version of the MIPS R3000CPU. Multiple clocks and timing routines are implemented in hardware and software to help prevent faults and downtime. To conserve heat and mass, spacecraft and instrument electronics are housed together in IEMs (Integrated Electronics Modules). There are two redundant IEMs. Including other functions such as instrument and radio electronics, each IEM contains 9boards. On March 19, 2007 the Command and Data Handling computer experienced an uncorrectable memory error and rebooted itself, causing the spacecraft to go into safe mode. The craft fully recovered within two days, with some data loss on Jupiter's magnetotail. No impact on the subsequent mission is expected.[26]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 7, 2015)

An old MIPS chip.  I guess it's simplicity is what makes it so easy to harden for the radiation of space.  Makes sense but still kinda lulzy that it can't even run two things at once.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 7, 2015)

On Monday, New Horizons was just under nine million km from Pluto, but 4.7 billion km from Earth.

The vast distance to the probe's home world means a radio signal takes about 4 hours and 25 minutes from sending to receipt.

Over the coming days, the spacecraft will send back pictures that show Pluto and its main moon, Charon, getting bigger and bigger.

Already, the far-off views are generating considerable excitement.

Pluto is seen to be reddish in colour and to have a series of mysterious spots. By comparison, Charon is grey. A lot of interest so far has centred on its dark polar cap.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 7, 2015)

Lately it seems we are finding things out in our Solar Systemat a record pace!  Still waiting to find out more about the pyramid and bright spots o Ceres.  And now we have here some dark spot excitement on Pluto as well as the apparent opposite chemical makeup of Pluto and Charon.  It would be nice to find out which was the wanderer and which grabbed the other.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 8, 2015)

Scientists have released their latest map of Pluto, using images from the inbound New Horizons spacecraft.

We’re only a day from reaching everyone’s favourite demoted planet—a Pluto Day, that is. The icy dwarf world rotates once every 6 days, 9 hours, and 22 minutes

The map combines images takes between 27 June and 3 July





It unwraps the visible parts of the sphere on to a flat projection, giving another view of the features that have started to emerge in recent days.

Evident are the light and dark patches at the equator, including one long dark band being dubbed "the whale".

The US space agency's (Nasa) New Horizons probe is now less than seven days away from its historic flyby.

It is due to pass over the surface of the dwarf planet at a distance of less than 13,000km, grabbing a mass of images and other kinds of scientific data.

The pictures at that point will be pin sharp, showing targets on the surface of the 2,300km-wide body at a resolution of better than 100m per pixel.

In the map on this page, the features are much less resolved. The images from which it was made were acquired between 27 June and 3 July.

They are a combination of shots from the probe's high-resolution, "black and white" camera, Lorri, and its lower-resolution, colour imager known as Ralph.

The whitish area in the centre covers the face of the dwarf planet that will present itself to New Horizons at closest approach.

To the east is the spotty terrain that has generated most discussion so far. Quite what these blobs represent is unclear. Each one is a few hundred km across.

Cradled in the whale's "tail", on the far left of the map, is something that looks like a doughnut. It could be a impact crater or a volcano, although at this resolution any interpretation remains pure speculation.

New Horizons has recovered from its weekend hiccup, in which the probe tripped itself into a protective safe mode and dropped communications with Earth for over an hour.

Engineers say they understand the cause of the computer glitch. This particular type of error, they stress, has now been ruled out for the probe's next few historic days.





The spots are part of a dark band that wraps around much of Pluto's equatorial region
As of Wednesday, New Horizons was less that 7.5 million km from Pluto.

It is moving at nearly 14km/s - far too fast to go into orbit on 14 July. Instead, it must gather as much information as it can while it sweeps past not just Pluto, but its five moons as well: Charon, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

The flyby occurs on the 50th anniversary of the first successful American pass of Mars by the Mariner 4 spacecraft.

By way of comparison, New Horizons will gather 5,000 times as much data at Pluto than Mariner did at the Red Planet.

New Horizons' difficulty is getting all that information back to Earth. The distance to Pluto is vast - more than 4.5 billion km - and this makes for very low bit rates.

It is likely to take 16 months to play back every piece of science acquired over the next week.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 8, 2015)

Sooooo, not much out there past Pluto, except for another suspected planet.  After that it's several light years till the next solar system.  Thus, I am stoopefied as to why they wouldn't slow it down and put it into orbit of at least Plutu, but preferably Pluto and Charon.


----------



## rooivalk (Jul 8, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Sooooo, not much out there past Pluto, except for another suspected planet.  After that it's several light years till the next solar system.  Thus, I am stoopefied as to why they wouldn't slow it down and put it into orbit of at least Plutu, but preferably Pluto and Charon.


What more interesting than hidden planet in between stars?


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 8, 2015)

rooivalk said:


> What more interesting than hidden planet in between stars?


 Even supposing there was a rogue planet wandering around in between solar systems, you'd not send a multi-million dollar probe out into that incomprehensible vastness in the faint hope it might run into something, literally.

Imagine being blindfolded, and at night, and being put into a stadium the size of, say Bangkok, or Los Angeles, and being told to find the one suitcase left somewhere in there.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 8, 2015)

This image of Pluto from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was received on July 8, and has been combined with lower-resolution colour information from the Ralph instrument.






In the early morning hours of July 8, mission scientists received this new view of Pluto—the most detailed yet returned by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. The image was taken on July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode.



This view is centered roughly on the area that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. This side of Pluto is dominated by three broad regions of varying brightness. Most prominent are an elongated dark feature at the equator, informally known as “the whale,” and a large heart-shaped bright area measuring some 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) across on the right. Above those features is a polar region that is intermediate in brightness.



“The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today,” said Jeff Moore, Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team Leader of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It will be incredible!”


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 8, 2015)

This is exciting!


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 8, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Thus, I am stoopefied as to why they wouldn't slow it down and put it into orbit of at least Plutu, but preferably Pluto and Charon.



something to do with the energy delta needed to get to Pluto in "" our lifetime "" made an orbital mission impossible   that's why they settled for a fly by

also not knowing the Orbital debris around Pluto/charon made this highly improbable
A fly by made the most sense
Pluto is suspected of having a tiny ring system  as well as the recently found and identified moons
New Horison is/ has doing science to try and identify if there is a ring system and how it will affect the fly by


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 8, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> something to do with the energy delta needed to get to Pluto in "" our lifetime "" made an orbital mission impossible   that's why they settled for a fly by
> 
> also not knowing the Orbital debris around Pluto/charon made this highly improbable
> A fly by made the most sense



Makes sense! Thanks for that.  So, it's on a suicide mission, destined to fly "dead" into the vast emptiness outside our solar system.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 8, 2015)

Epicness before your very eyes and this stuff is only going to get better........much better.


The Launch  29th Jan 2006


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 8, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Makes sense! Thanks for that. So, it's on a suicide mission, destined to fly "dead" into the vast emptiness outside our solar system.


that's the last thing they want Nasa still expect New Horizon to carry on with scientific research well past Pluto and into the Oort Cloud (such as looking for new Plutoids and the general makeup of the Oort Cloud )

As long as Nasa get (Extended) funding for New Horizon's research and New Horizon's can comunicate with earth then onwards it will go ( power is not a problem as its self contained in that respect and is expected to last years).


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 8, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> that's the last thing they want Nasa still expect New Horizon to carry on with scientific research well past Pluto and into the Oort Cloud (such as looking for new Plutoids and the general makeup of the Oort Cloud )
> 
> As long as Nasa get (Extended) funding for New Horizon's research and New Horizon's can comunicate with earth then onwards it will go ( power is not a problem as its self contained in that respect and is expected to last years).


 
Oh, it's nuclear-powered?  I thought it was solar-powered, with light from solar radiation being at a premium that far out.

EDIT: N/M, just read it is powerd by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 8, 2015)

_New Horizons_ has both spin-stabilized (cruise) and three-axis stabilized (science) modes controlled entirely with hydrazine monopropellant. Additional post launch delta-v of over 290 m/s (1,000 km/h; 650 mph) is provided by a 77 kg (170 lb) internal tank. Helium is used as a pressurant, with an elastomeric diaphragm assisting expulsion. The spacecraft's on-orbit mass including fuel is over 470 kg (1,040 lb) on the Jupiter flyby trajectory, but would have been only 445 kg (981 lb) for the backup direct flight option to Pluto. Significantly, had the backup option been taken, this would have meant less fuel for later Kuiper belt operations.

There are 16 thrusters on _New Horizons_: four 4.4 N (1.0 lbf) and twelve 0.9 N (0.2 lbf) plumbed into redundant branches. The larger thrusters are used primarily for trajectory corrections, and the small ones (previously used on _Cassini_ and the _Voyager_ spacecraft) are used primarily for attitude control and spinup/spindown maneuvers. Two star cameras (from Galileo Avionica) are used for fine attitude control. They are mounted on the face of the spacecraft and provide attitude information while in spin-stabilized or 3-axis mode. Between star camera readings, knowledge is provided by dual redundant Miniature Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU) from Honeywell. Each unit contains three solid-state gyroscopes and three accelerometers. Two Adcole Sun sensors provide attitude control. One detects the angle to the Sun, whereas the other measures spin rate and clocking.

A cylindrical radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) protrudes from one vertex in the plane of the triangle. The RTG will provide about 250 W, 30 V DC at launch, and is predicted to drop approximately 5% every 4years, decaying to 200 W by the encounter with the Plutonian system in 2015. The RTG, model "GPHS-RTG," was originally a spare from the Cassini mission. The RTG contains 10.9 kg (24 lb) of plutonium-238 oxide pellets. Each pellet is clad iniridium, then encased in a graphite shell. It was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy at the Materials and Fuels Complex (formerly Argonne West), a part of the Idaho National Laboratory in Bingham County.[35] Less power than the original design goal was produced because of delays at the United States Department of Energy, including security activities, that delayed production. The mission parameters and observation sequence had to be modified for the reduced wattage; still, not all instruments can operate simultaneously. The Department of Energy transferred the space battery program from Ohio to Argonne in 2002 because of security concerns. There are no onboard batteries. RTG output is relatively predictable; load transients are handled by a capacitor bank and fast circuit breakers.

The amount of radioactive plutonium in the RTG is 10.9 kg (24 lb), about one-third the amount on board the Cassini–Huygens probe when it launched in 1997. That launch was protested by some people. The United States Department of Energy estimated the chances of a launch accident that would release radiation into the atmosphere at 1 in 350, and monitored the launch[36] as it always does when RTGs are involved. It was estimated that a worst-case scenario of total dispersal of on-board plutonium would spread the equivalent radiation of 80% the average annual dosage in North America from background radiation over an area with a radius of 105 km (65 mi)


the propulsion system is for tweaks, gravity drives this machine.


----------



## Steevo (Jul 8, 2015)

That black finned thing on it is the RTG, and it is plutonium powered, and we could stand next to it with just thin aluminum shielding between us as Plutonium only emits Alpha particles (stopped by a sheet of paper).

The electronics will not work at those cold temperatures so a nuclear power generator is used to provide electricity and heat.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 8, 2015)

@dorsetknob mentioned space debris, theres a chance that the flyby could be as close as 2000 miles 3200km  because of debris..........that would be brilliant, only 2000 miles from Pluto.



After astronomers announced the discovery of two new moons in the Pluto system, Kerberos and Styx, mission planners started contemplating the possibility of the probe running into unseen debris and dust left over from earlier collisions with the moons.
A study based on 18 months of computer simulations, Earth-based telescope observations and occultations of the Pluto system revealed that the possibility of a catastrophic collision with debris or dust is less than 0.3% on the probe's scheduled course. If the hazard increases, _New Horizons_ will use one of two possible contingency plans, the so-called SHBOTs (Safe Haven by Other Trajectories): the probe could continue on its present trajectory with the antenna facing the incoming particles so the more vital systems would be protected, or, it could position its antenna and make a course correction that would take it just 3000 km from the surface of Pluto where it is expected that the atmospheric drag would clean the surrounding space of possible debris


----------



## Norton (Jul 9, 2015)

Looks like a planet to me- Neil Degrasse Tyson can suck it!  

This is getting better every day... wondering what else this little probe will find out there


----------



## Steevo (Jul 9, 2015)

Norton said:


> Looks like a planet to me- Neil Degrasse Tyson can suck it!
> 
> This is getting better every day... wondering what else this little probe will find out there




I think we need to redefine any planet as any orbiting body with a non-spiral trajectory around the nearest star and a spherical shape with at least X% of its mass inside the mean spherical shape.


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 9, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Sooooo, not much out there past Pluto, except for another suspected planet.  After that it's several light years till the next solar system.  Thus, I am stoopefied as to why they wouldn't slow it down and put it into orbit of at least Plutu, but preferably Pluto and Charon.



Lies, Kuiper Belt has many objects to look at.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 9, 2015)

Steevo said:


> I think we need to redefine any planet as any orbiting body with a non-spiral trajectory around the nearest star and a spherical shape with at least X% of its mass inside the mean spherical shape.



I guess that would include my favorite mystery body: Ceres


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 9, 2015)

Pluto is so far away that astronomers only discovered four of those orbiting bodies in the last decade (the largest, Charon, was discovered in 1978). New analysis of Pluto’s system, gleaned from Hubble Space Telescope images, suggests that three of the small moons—Styx, Nix and Hydra—are locked in close rotation. That keeps them from colliding as they circle the “binary planet” formed by Pluto and Charon.

But that alignment can be thrown into chaos thanks to interactions with those larger bodies and the recently discovered moon Kerberos. Astronomers Mark Showalter and Douglas Hamilton hope their findings, published in Naturetoday, will help explain how planets and their satellites form. Saturn’s cratered, potato-shaped moon Hyperion also has a wobbly rotation, one that is impossible to forecast in advance, unlike the majority of well-behaved, synchronously rotating moons in the solar system.

Read more here.


----------



## micropage7 (Jul 9, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> An old MIPS chip.  I guess it's simplicity is what makes it so easy to harden for the radiation of space.  Makes sense but still kinda lulzy that it can't even run two things at once.


i think its better for avoiding any failure although it would take longer time since it runs one by one


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 9, 2015)

What will Pluto mission discover?









here is a really good piece just released  by the BBC, it doesnt take long to read
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33428497


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 9, 2015)

The funny thing is, those of us nerdy enough to be following this will be siting with baited breath on July 16th, but it will be November of NEXT year before the last of the data from the flyby is transmitted, and even longer until NASA release alot of it.

I bet it's weeks before we even get a decent closeup pic.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 9, 2015)

With just a few watts of power in its transmitter - and billions of kilometres of space to traverse, the signal can only carry one kilobit of information per second.


NASA will keep us happy.  , they release stuff quickly , its ESA that always keeps us waiting.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 10, 2015)

Pluto in a minute,

excellent mini vids from NASA
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiuUQ9asub3RUlLBXMFGq8aFEPS5yONT2






Nice little fact.........after travelling 3 billion miles, New Horizons is aiming for a "box in space" that measures just 60 miles by 90 miles


todays live briefing
http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 10, 2015)

New pic just in Can't wait for the big pictures on 16th and 20th (*edit:* apparently this was a black and white picture, so the colors are applied from the last (lower res) image, but still it's awesome we are getting closer finally)






rtwjunkie said:


> I bet it's weeks before we even get a decent closeup pic.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 10, 2015)

@Ikaruga great pic!  However, my statement was taken out of context.  I was referring to the really close 3,000 mile pics.  Tons of those will be taken, and the data transmission is so slow, that they said it will be 16 months after the flyby before we have all pictures and data, and then will still mostly just be raw pictures for awhile too.  So anything we do see will be very small numbers until then.


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 10, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> @Ikaruga great pic!  However, my statement was taken out of context.  I was referring to the really close 3,000 mile pics.  Tons of those will be taken, and the data transmission is so slow, that they said it will be 16 months after the flyby before we have all pictures and data, and then will still mostly just be raw pictures for awhile too.  So anything we do see will be very small numbers until then.


Yes, - as the picture states - after 20th of July, no further data from LORRI will be returned until September 14, when we will start getting the entire captured set, but I think we will have quite nice images on 20-21th, and they will even get better a few days later when scientist will enhance them with post-processing. This blog from Emily Lakdawalla details it very well: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html

The tricky part here is that New Horizon travels very fast,13.8 km/s (49,680km/h; 30,870mph)  (4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph), and the team gets only one try to rotate the camera from forward to backward and take the "big picture" when the space craft will be at the closest ("above" Pluto). This is actually a very big challenge, my fingers are crossed, but there will be a big single photo before that day, and they will send that photo to us:


> LORRI *Pluto* at 3.8 kilometers per pixel (~630 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 20:17:28. Range 768,000 km. - The best single-frame photo of Pluto that will be available during encounter period





*edit:* fixed stupid velocity values (bad copy-paste mistake), thanks* *revin for the heads-up.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 10, 2015)

A NASA animation following the New Horizons spacecraft from its launch in 2006 to the planned flypast of Pluto and its moon











Pluto and Charon


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 10, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> A NASA animation following the New Horizons spacecraft from its launch in 2006 to the planned flypast of Pluto and its moon


 I love it how it jumps to warp at the end


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 10, 2015)

@rtwjunkie 

there is 15 years worth of fuel left on board......we are off to the Oort Cloud


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 10, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> @rtwjunkie
> 
> there is 15 years worth of fuel left on board......we are off to the Oort Cloud


 
 Have you read how many years it will take just to get to the inner perimeter?  It's futile, LOL!

EDIT:  According to this chart, and explanation, Voyager 1, which has quite a head start, will take 300 years to reach the inner perimeter!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg

*Future exploration[edit]*
Space probes have yet to reach the area of the Oort cloud. _Voyager 1_, the fastest[53] and farthest[54][55] of the interplanetary space probes currently exiting the Solar System, will reach the Oort cloud in about 300 years[4][56] and would take about 30,000 years to pass through it.[57][58] However, around 2025, _Voyager 1'_s radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough power to operate any of its scientific instruments, preventing any meaningful exploration by _Voyager 1._ The other four probes currently escaping the Solar System will also be non-functional when they reach the Oort cloud.
One proposal for exploration is to use a craft powered by a solar sail that would take around 30 years to reach its destination.[59

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 10, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> It's futile, LOL!


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 10, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Have you read how many years it will take just to get to the inner perimeter? It's futile, LOL!



that Sir is an example of the thinking of that peasant seaman crew of the Nina pinto and the santa maria
god knows how Columbus "" found the new World ""
Oh i Know they Sailed off the edge of Flat world onto page 2


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 10, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> that Sir is an example of the thinking of that peasant seaman crew of the Nina pinto and the santa maria
> god knows how Columbus "" found the new World ""
> Oh i Know they Sailed off the edge of Flat world onto page 2


 
The problem is the fuel supply running out before it ever reaches the inner perimeter in 300 years.  If they can send out a probe with a solar sail, which is still just conjecture and theory, then it would arrive in 30 years, with fuel.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 10, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> god knows how Columbus "" found the new World "




i know how Columbus found the New World, he used a map the Chinese made.


Epigraph researcher John Ruskamp claims these symbols shown in the enhanced image above, found etched into rock at the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are evidence that ancient Chinese explorers discovered America long before Christopher Columbus stumbled on the continent in 1492





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...e-Asians-lived-New-World-3-300-years-ago.html


This is a really good documentary.....the book is even better.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 10, 2015)

What 


CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> i know how Columbus found the New World, he used a map the Chinese made.



No mention of St Brendon the paddyMonk  or Owen the The _coracle_ sailor from the Vally's or the vikings in Vinland


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 10, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> The problem is the fuel supply running out before it ever reaches the inner perimeter in 300 years.  If they can send out a probe with a solar sail, which is still just conjecture and theory, then it would arrive in 30 years, with fuel.


Kuiper belt fly-through will be also exciting. They said they will adjusting the trajectory towards objects of interests. After Pluto, it will have enough power to run its systems for a about decade, so there is a lot to come. (fun fact: they did not have much Plutonium available at the time they assembled the probe, so  - while it's much more efficient (because it's newer) - New Horizons actually has a slower data rate than Voyager :-/ )


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 10, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> that Sir is an example of the thinking of that peasant seaman crew of the Nina pinto and the santa maria
> god knows how Columbus "" found the new World ""
> Oh i Know they Sailed off the edge of Flat world onto page 2



Only Columbus didn't discover the new world, Vikings were there well before him...  Oh well, another topic.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 10, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> Only Columbus didn't discover the new world, Vikings were there well before him... Oh well, another topic.


Ahm  um speculatively covered in post   #42


dorsetknob said:


> No mention of St Brendon the paddyMonk or Owen the The _coracle_ sailor from the Vally's or the vikings in Vinland


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 10, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> Ahm  um speculatively covered in post   #42



Yeah, saw that later.  Somehow I missed that, but was too lazy to delete my post after noticing it.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 10, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> Kuiper belt fly-through will be also exciting. They said they will adjusting the trajectory towards objects of interests. After Pluto, it will have enough power to run its systems for a about decade, so there is a lot to come. (fun fact: they did not have much Plutonium available at the time they assembled the probe, so  - while it's much more efficient (because it's newer) - New Horizons actually has a slower data rate than Voyager :-/ )


Yep, a decade of fuel will allow some exploration of the Kuiper belt, but leave it hundreds of years from the Oort Cloud.

We can always hope that one day we find an ability to fuel something long enough to reach it.


----------



## revin (Jul 11, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> New Horizon travels very fast, 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph),


 Just to clarify, that was the speed *Boost* it got from Jupiter, 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), is about the speed it is traveling aproaching
*Planet* Pluto..............by damn there was 9 planet's for 50 years when I grew up, and there still is !!!!
Oh how I remeber being glued to the TV in the late 60's/70's watching Gemini & Apollo's !!!!
Indeed it's just as exciting now !! and love that Pluto actually has a mini cosmo system of it's own !!!


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 11, 2015)

revin said:


> Indeed it's just as exciting now !! and love that Pluto actually has a mini cosmo system of it's own !!!



And that in my Opinion makes it as much a PLANET as Saturn or Jupiter


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 11, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> And that in my Opinion makes it as much a PLANET as Saturn or Jupiter



It's orbit is still pretty funky though...


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 11, 2015)

revin said:


> Just to clarify, that was the speed *Boost* it got from Jupiter, 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), is about the speed it is traveling aproaching
> *Planet* Pluto..............by damn there was 9 planet's for 50 years when I grew up, and there still is !!!!
> Oh how I remeber being glued to the TV in the late 60's/70's watching Gemini & Apollo's !!!!
> Indeed it's just as exciting now !! and love that Pluto actually has a mini cosmo system of it's own !!!



You took the words out of my mouth. When i was a kid all this was science fiction.
We didnt own a telly in 1969 so i watched the first moon landing with my Dad through a shop window in Aberystwyth.


----------



## revin (Jul 11, 2015)

*Eye's on Pluto* Awesome Program !!!
Hurry and grab it, and it's fun to play with

EDIT: We made part's for this also


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 11, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Yep, a decade of fuel will allow some exploration of the Kuiper belt, but leave it hundreds of years from the Oort Cloud.
> 
> We can always hope that one day we find an ability to fuel something long enough to reach it.


We could have nuclear propulsion since the middle of the last decade (example: Orion drive). That could be used to reach everything "pretty fast" (compared to chemical propulsion), it's just humanity's fear of everything "nuclear" what's holding us back to use it.


revin said:


> Just to clarify, that was the speed Boost it got from Jupiter, 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), is about the speed it is traveling aproaching
> Planet Pluto


"Just to clarify", I was talking about the relative velocity to Pluto (since that's the most logical reference point when we talk about New Horizons (or so I thought at least), and that's 13.79 km/s at the time I write this post. Yes the space craft was traveling very fast once indeed. Sorry if my words were confusing, here is a velocity curve diagram:


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 11, 2015)

> We didnt own a telly in 1969 so i watched the first moon landing with my Dad through a shop window in Aberystwyth.



And now we're here in the future, and all I can think of when british folks say "telly" is Teletubbies. (which is also a product of Britain, by the way...)

The future is scarier than we could ever have imagined.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 11, 2015)

Tantalizing signs of geology on Pluto are revealed in this image from New Horizons taken on July 9, 2015 from 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) away. At this range, Pluto is beginning to reveal the first signs of discrete geologic features. This image views the side of Pluto that always faces its largest moon, Charon, and includes the so-called “tail” of the dark whale-shaped feature along its equator. (The immense, bright feature shaped like a heart had rotated from view when this image was captured. Among the structures tentatively identified in this new image are what appear to be polygonal features; a complex band of terrain stretching east-northeast across the planet, approximately 1,000 miles long; and a complex region where bright terrains meet the dark terrains of the whale. 


The image was taken on Thursday from a distance of 5.4 million km










The probe's latest picture released on Saturday has started to give scientists some real indications of the geology on the dwarf world.

The new black-and-white view reveals a vast band of patterned terrain stretching around the globe for roughly 1,500km.
Nasa's spacecraft is due to flyby the distant mini-planet on Tuesday.
When it does so, it will be just 12,500km above the surface.
At that point, its telescopic camera, Lorri, will be acquiring images at a resolution that is better than 100m per pixel.
But for the moment, features still have a rather blurred look about them.
This latest shot from Lorri was taken on Thursday when New Horizons was still 5.4 million km from its target.
At this distance, the resolution is 27km per pixel. Nonetheless, even at this range, there is plenty to excite the geologists.
You can still see just below the patterned band the very dark terrain that scientists have dubbed "the whale". Not visible anymore, however, is the very bright region that looked like a heart in earlier images. This has rotated out of view.
It will, though, come back around, and will be the face of the 2,300km-wide world that is presented to New Horizons at closest approach.

"Among the structures tentatively identified in this new image are what appear to be polygonal features; a complex band of terrain stretching east-northeast across the planet, approximately 1,000 miles long; and a complex region where bright terrains meet the dark terrains of the whale," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.


----------



## revin (Jul 11, 2015)

Is everyone watching thru *Eyes on Pluto* ?
It's awesome seeing it turn and shoot and send back the data 

Just about 31,000 mph and it still pick's out the target !!!!

EDIT: 1P.M. CST  DATA on the way back to us !!!!!


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 11, 2015)

revin said:


> Just to clarify, that was the speed *Boost* it got from Jupiter, 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), is about the speed it is traveling aproaching
> *Planet* Pluto


lol I just saw what numbers I put there. I did not check until now, you are right, sorry and thanks for the heads-up. I copy pasted the wrong numbers and didn't even realize what I was doing. (I edited that post).

Thanks again


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 12, 2015)

The latest picture of Pluto shows the face of the dwarf planet that will not be seen during next week's historic flyby.






The US space agency's New Horizons probe was less than 2.5 million km from the diminutive world on Saturday and closing in fast.

Come Tuesday, it will be grabbing shots from an altitude of just 12,500km.

But the newly published image, showing Pluto's "spots", is of the hemisphere that will soon rotate out of view.

It will not be seen again until after New Horizons has gone behind the 2,300km-wide dwarf, and then only in the faint light reflected off the little planet's biggest moon, Charon.

That in itself should make for some fascinating science, however, because it will tell researchers what happens on Pluto's dark side.

Some models predict that its nitrogen-rich atmosphere snows out in the deep cold of night.

The mission team will be able to determine if this is so by studying changes in the patterns of reflectivity.

Pluto's four dark spots first came into focus at the end of June.

The intrigue is their regular spacing and size, with each being about 480km across.

Closest approach to Pluto on Tuesday is set for exactly 11:49:59 GMT (12:49:59 BST; 07:49:59 EDT).


The BBC will be screening a special Sky At Night programme called Pluto Revealed on Monday 20 July,

Nice little fact
Moving at a speed of 30,800 miles (49,570 kilometers) per hour, it is the fastest spacecraft ever launched.


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 12, 2015)

Those spots...







Someone was going to say it...


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 12, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Nice little fact
> Moving at a speed of 30,800 miles (49,570 kilometers) per hour, it is the fastest spacecraft ever launched.


Another little fact that while New Horizons is indeed the fastest spacecraft ever "escaped" from earth, but Helios 2 still holds the speed record with a staggering 70.22 km/s (252,792 km/h or 157,078 mi/h)


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 12, 2015)

*NASA's £460m mission to photograph and explore the furthest reaches of the solar system is running on the same processor that you used to play Tomb Raider in 1996*



The probe is powered by a 32-bit Mongoose V processor which is based on the same MIPS R3000 which featured in the original Sony PlayStation.

While the chip runs at just 12MHz, it was enough to handle Tomb Raider and NASA believe it will also be sufficient to explore the furthest reaches of the solar system.

Actually, there are two computer systems, each running on one of the processors: one to handle data and one for guidance and control. And each system is duplicated.

So the probe actually has the computing power of four PlayStations.

“The Mongoose-V processor analyses positional information, distributes operating commands to multiple spacecraft subsystems, collects and processes instrument data, and sends bursts of data back to Earth,” says *Alexandru Voica of MIPS owner Imagination Technologies*.

“It also runs an advanced autonomy algorithm that allows the probe to auto-correct any issues or contact operators on Earth for help.”


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 12, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> The probe is powered by a 32-bit Mongoose V processor which is based on the same MIPS R3000 which featured in the original Sony PlayStation.
> 
> While the chip runs at just 12MHz, it was enough to handle Tomb Raider and NASA believe it will also be sufficient to explore the furthest reaches of the solar system.
> 
> ...


I think the Playstation was using the R3000A which ran at 33Mhz, the Mongoose-V is radiation hardened and clocked slower, but it has onchip cache and includes a MIPS R3010 FPU and it costs more than $21000 each (here are its radiation test results: http://radhome.gsfc.nasa.gov/radhome/papers/b110897.html) I also read somewhere that they never do multitasking on the CPU to save power, but don't remember where.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 12, 2015)

info here
*Alexandru Voica of MIPS owner Imagination Technologies*.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

If ever i wanted a live feed now would be the time. 






"New Horizons has transformed our view of this distant moon from a nearly featureless ball of ice to a world displaying all kinds of geologic activity," said McKinnon, who's based at Washington University in St. Louis.

The most noticeable crater in the new photo, which was received at mission control today (July 12), is about 60 miles (100 km) wide and lies near Charon's south pole. The brightness of the rays emanating from the crater suggests that it formed relatively recently, researchers said.

The crater's floor is significantly darker than surrounding areas, perhaps because the impact that gouged out the crater exposed different material than that found on the surface. It's also possible that material at the bottom of the crater simply has a larger grain size and therefore reflects less sunlight, mission team members said.

Charon is by far the largest of Pluto's five known moons. At about 750 miles (1,200 km) in diameter, Charon is about half as wide as the dwarf planet itself.


----------



## Norton (Jul 13, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Charon is by far the largest of Pluto's five known moons.



Latest picture of Charon just in but...



Spoiler: That's no moon....



Sorry, someone had to do it


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 13, 2015)

Norton said:


> Latest picture of Charon just in but...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



God  Help us its left its Parking orbit around Saturn  where to next


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

[written by Amanda Zangari]
http://www.planetary.org/connect/ou...ngari.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/


LORRI, our high resolution imager, has an 8-inch (20cm) aperture. The diffraction limit (how much an 8” telescope can magnify) is 3.05 mircorad. which is just over half the size of single pixel 4.95 microrad. So if we swapped out the current sensor with a higher res one, we couldn’t do much better because of the laws of physics. A bigger telescope would solve that problem, but then it would make the spacecraft heavier, which require more fuel to send to Pluto AND a longer time to get there, because the spacecraft is more massive. We launched Pluto on the largest, most powerful rocket available at the time (the Atlas V, with extra boosters), so again we’re limited by physics: “At the time” doesn’t mean best ever. The Saturn V rocket, which sent astronauts to the moon, was actually more powerful.

More megapixels also means more memory. For example, LORRI images are made up of a header and then the 1024x1024 array of numbers that make up our image and go from 0 to 65535 (216). There’s not really a way to make that info smaller if we went to 2048x2048. We could downlink a compressed version, but we want the full info eventually.

We could have a bigger hard drive. At some point either a very short time ago or a in the next few days, we’re wiping the entire hard drive in prep for the encounter. So having a larger hard drive would have been nice, and yeah we could use that, and today’s tech would probably get us a bigger one.. We are filling up said HD during the encounter. On the other hand, we will be downlinking stuff until the end of 2016, so bigger hard drive means we need the spacecraft to survive even longer to finish it (we are not planning on it breaking, but it’s a risk, so we are downloading a compressed version of everything, which will all be down in November, but think really lossy JPEGS).

Our downlink rate is actually limited by the spacecraft power. We have all the plutonium we could get our hands on, but there was actually a shortage at the time. As a result, even Voyager has a higher downlink rate then we do. :-( It’s still really cool we can run all our instruments with less power than an incandescent light would use.

So yeah, the things that would make our mission better, super smartphone tech can’t really fix. It’s all physics. And lack of Plutonium (We wants moar!!! Tell your congressfolk, we can’t go to the outer solar system on solar. Us planetary folk would love missions to Uranus and Neptune.)



little fact
It took astronauts three days to reach the Moon. New Horizons passed it in nine hours.


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 13, 2015)

Does New Horizons seriously use a spinning platter hard disk, or is this just terminology for a flash disk?


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

I am reading that there are two solid state drives but i cant find the specs....yet.

heres a bit more
For data storage, New Horizons carries two low-power solid-state recorders (one backup) that can hold up to 8 gigabytes each. The main processor collects, compresses, reformats, sorts and stores science and housekeeping (telemetry) data on the recorder – similar to a flash memory card for a digital camera – for transmission to Earth through the telecommunications subsystem.

The Command and Data Handling system is housed in an Integrated Electronics Module that also contains a vital guidance computer, the communication system and part of the REX instrument.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Spacecraft/Systems-and-Components.php


----------



## RCoon (Jul 13, 2015)

Great website to illustrate just how far apart planetary bodies are from each other:

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

nice one @RCoon i think i wore my mouse out


----------



## revin (Jul 13, 2015)

*"*Seriously. When are we gonna be there?*"*   So if you're planning on taking a trip to Jupiter, you might want to use a different map.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

little fact
The best pictures of Pluto will depict surface features as small as 25 meters (about 80 feet) across.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

Very good vid, latest news, amazingly Pluto is bigger than we thought.

http://www.space.com/29850-new-hori...e-coverage.html?cmpid=NL_SP_weekly_2015-07-13


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 13, 2015)

bigger than a dwarf planet now and with no less than 5 Moons   many still consider it a true planet
Mr Tyson crap whats his name you need to review your error
the premise and arguments used to demote Pluto are  shown to be totaly inaccurate


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

LATEST


----------



## Ahhzz (Jul 13, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> bigger than a dwarf planet now and with no less than 5 Moons   many still consider it a true planet
> Mr Tyson crap whats his name you need to review your error
> the premise and arguments used to demote Pluto are  shown to be totaly inaccurate


I agree with you _in theory_, however, the main reason they demoted Pluto was its inability to "clear the neighborhood". They must be big enough to knock other bodies out of their orbit. 

Sigh. Personally (like it matters), I would prefer it to be listed as a planet, but I'm a guy, and hate change


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 13, 2015)

Ahhzz said:


> I agree with you _in theory_, however, the main reason they demoted Pluto was its inability to "clear the neighborhood". They must be big enough to knock other bodies out of their orbit.



You mean like Jupiter cleared away the *Trojan asteroids*


The *Jupiter trojans*, commonly called *Trojan asteroids* or just *Trojans*, are a large group of objects that share the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun.
or 
The *Mars trojans* are a group of objects that share the orbit of the planet Mars around the Sun.
or
*Neptune trojans* are bodies in orbit around the Sun that orbit near one of the stable Lagrangian points of Neptune. They therefore have approximately the same orbital period as Neptune and follow roughly the same orbital path. Twelve Neptune trojans are currently known, of which nine orbit near the Sun–Neptune L4 Lagrangian point 60° ahead of Neptune[1] and three orbit near Neptune's L5 region 60° behind Neptune.[1] The Neptune trojans are termed 'trojans' by analogy with the Jupiter trojans.

Funny according to the requiste to be a planet they have to clear their Orbit

have they   no they have not just like Pluto


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

Pluto’s bright, mysterious “heart” is rotating into view, ready for its close-up on close approach, in this image taken by New Horizons on July 12 from a distance of 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers). It is the target of the highest-resolution images that will be taken during the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14. The intriguing “bulls-eye” feature at right is rotating out of view, and will not be seen in greater detail.

Oooooops turns out i posted the last pic  #76) before NASA released it, ( i clipped it off the vid ......ssssssssshhhhh)


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 13, 2015)

It would have been possible for the _New Horizons_ spacecraft to investigate 2011 HM102, the only L5 Neptune trojans discovered by 2014 detectable by _New Horizons_, when it passed through this region of space en route to Pluto.However, _New Horizons_ may not have had sufficient downlink bandwidth, so it was decided to give precedence to the preparations for the Pluto flyby


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 13, 2015)

Pics taken of Jupiter and its' moons during flypast 2007 en route to Pluto

New Horizons captured this glimpse of Io during a tour of the Jupiter system in 2007. It used that encounter to uncover information about the giant planet and its enigmatic moons.






Volcanic Io hovers in front of giant Jupiter, seen in the infrared in this composite image





This moony mosaic captures (left to right) Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, Jupiter's four largest moons





more here
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic...d-pluto-we-revisit-its-gorgeous-jupiter-pics/


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 14, 2015)

Ahhzz said:


> I agree with you _in theory_, however, the main reason they demoted Pluto was its inability to "clear the neighborhood". They must be big enough to knock other bodies out of their orbit.
> 
> Sigh. Personally (like it matters), I would prefer it to be listed as a planet, but I'm a guy, and hate change



And also because of the 5 other bodies discovered in the Kuiper belt, one of which New Horizons may go to.  The feeling was they disn't want to keep adding planets, since those other dwarf planets are almost the size of Pluto.  I'm with you though, to me, Pluto will always be a planet.

On that note, if it ever regains it's status, then Ceres, which is almost as big needs to be a planet too.  Dawn is in the process of maneuvering its orbit right now to 900 mere miles from its surface.


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 14, 2015)

*note:* this is not a new pic ofc, it's from this one:


----------



## Valeriant (Jul 14, 2015)

Whoop whoop!






I remember watching the launch! It's like booking a hotel 9 years from now just for a night lol. Man, finally it's almost there. Goodluck and then godspeed again to New Horizon.

"To boldly go where no one has gone before." - ST:TNG


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 14, 2015)

To all the people upset pluto is no longer a "planet"

Keep in mind pluto never changed.  It's the same rock that I loved when I was a kid, we just understand it better now.  Pluto is still pluto, and always will be.  We just get to see it a lot better now courtesy new horizons.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 14, 2015)

The BBC will be screening a special Sky At Night programme called Pluto Revealed on Monday 20 July, which will recap all the big moments from the New Horizons flyby.




size comparison of Earth Pluto and charon


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

I feel like I am 10 again.....


----------



## btarunr (Jul 14, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> Nasa needs to learn to multithread.



A radiation-hardened Core i7-4790 would cost tens of millions of dollars per chip (if it's even possible to build it). With space missions, everything is built to purpose. The hardware has the bare minimum power (transistor count) required to achieve the design goals. Because over the years, you have space-dust coating your solar panels, and your nuclear-TEC generator will barely put out enough power for a smartphone. That's why most of these probes are built with simple MIPS/ARM chips. x86 is a very inefficient CPU architecture.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

New Horizons is designed to retain heat like a thermos bottle. The spacecraft is covered in lightweight, goldcolored, multilayered thermal insulation blankets, which hold in heat from operating electronics to keep the spacecraft warm. Heat from the electronics will keep the spacecraft operating at between 10-30 degrees Celsius (about 50-85 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout the journey. New Horizons’ sophisticated, automated heating system monitors power levels inside the craft to make sure the electronics are running at enough wattage to maintain safe temperatures. Any drop below that operating level (about 150 watts) and it will activate small heaters around the craft to make up the difference. When the spacecraft is closer to Earth and the Sun, louvers (that act as heat vents) on the craft will open when internal temperatures are too high.

New Horizons needs less power than a pair of 100-watt light bulbs to complete its mission at Pluto. On average, each of the seven science instruments uses between 2 and 10 watts – about the power of a night light – when turned on.

The payload is incredibly power efficient – with the instruments collectively drawing less than 28 watts – and represent a degree of miniaturization that is unprecedented in planetary exploration. The instruments were designed specifically to handle the cold conditions and low light levels at Pluto and in the Kuiper Belt beyond.

*Alice*
 Mass: 4.5 kilograms (9.9 pounds) Average Power: 4.4 watts Development: Southwest Research Institute Principal Investigator: Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute Purpose: Study atmospheric composition and structure Alice is a sensitive ultraviolet imaging spectrometer designed to probe the composition and structure of Pluto’s dynamic atmosphere. A spectrometer separates light into its constituent wavelengths (like a prism). An “imaging spectrometer” both separates the different wavelengths of light and produces an image of the target at each wavelength.

*Ralph *
Mass: 10.3 kilograms (22.7 pounds) Average Power: 6.3 watts Development: Ball Aerospace Corporation, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Southwest Research Institute Principal Investigator: Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute Purpose: Study surface geology and morphology; obtain surface composition and surface temperature maps

*Radio Science Experiment (REX)*
 Mass: 100 grams (3.5 ounces) Average Power: 2.1 watts Development: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Stanford University Principal Investigator: Len Tyler, Stanford University Purpose: Measure atmospheric temperature and pressure (down to the surface); measure density of the ionosphere; search for atmospheres around Charon and other KBOs

*Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI)*
 Mass: 8.8 kilograms (19.4 pounds) Average Power: 5.8 watts Development: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Principal Investigator: Andy Cheng, Applied Physics Laboratory Purpose: Study geology; provide high-resolution approach and highest-resolution encounter images

*Solar Wind at Pluto (SWAP)*
 Mass: 3.3 kilograms (7.3 pounds) Average Power: 2.3 watts Development: Southwest Research Institute Principal Investigator: David McComas, Southwest Research Institute Purpose: Study solar wind interactions and atmospheric escape

*Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) *
Mass: 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) Average Power: 2.5 watts Development: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Principal Investigator: Ralph McNutt Jr., Applied Physics Laboratory Purpose: Study the density, composition, and nature of energetic particles and plasmas resulting from the escape of Pluto’s atmosphere

*Student Dust Counter (SDC)*
 Mass: 1.9 kilograms (4.2 pounds) Average Power: 5 watts Development: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder Principal Investigator: Mihaly Horanyi, University of Colorado at Boulder Purpose: Measure concentration of dust particles in outer solar system


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 14, 2015)

btarunr said:


> A radiation-hardened Core i7-4790 would cost tens of millions of dollars per chip (if it's even possible to build it). With space missions, everything is built to purpose. The hardware has the bare minimum power (transistor count) required to achieve the design goals. Because over the years, you have space-dust coating your solar panels, and your nuclear-TEC generator will barely put out enough power for a smartphone. That's why most of these probes are built with simple MIPS/ARM chips. x86 is a very inefficient CPU architecture.



I said multithread.  I did not say x86 or even multicore.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

'The computer was trying to do two things at the same time, and the two were more than the processor could handle at the same time, so the processor overloaded,' said Nasa's Glen Fountain, explaining the loss of contact.

sounds more like "multitasking", i definitely overload when i try and do it 
( stops typing to take a breath)


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

The approximate sizes of Pluto’s moons Nix and Hydra compared to Denver, Colorado. While Nix and Hydra are illustrated as circles in this diagram, mission scientists anticipate that future observations by New Horizons will show that they are irregular in shape.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 14, 2015)

In English terms (and welsh )  thats the size of the isle of wight and Isle of Anglesey


----------



## BiggieShady (Jul 14, 2015)




----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 14, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> In English terms (and welsh )  thats the size of the isle of wight and Isle of Anglesey


 
But @CAPSLOCKSTUCK is multilingual, thus the Denver reference!


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

shit,that was exciting.

Little fact
scientists must wait until 2am BST on Wednesday for the probe to make contact with Earth and confirm it has survived the encounter.







When Pluto was discovered in 1930, a competition was held to find a name for the new planet. Eleven-year-old Venetia Burney from Oxford chose Pluto because it was dark and far away, like the god of the underworld. She received a £5 note as a reward.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...atch-live-Nasas-New-Horizons-Pluto-flyby.html

live briefing


----------



## newbsandwich (Jul 14, 2015)

Thanks for posting all the incredible pics, vids, info, etc... Love it all
I'm just a lonely contractor out at JSC, and sometimes I feel I was able to get more info from this thread alone than actually being at NASA and waiting for the official announcements.


----------



## Norton (Jul 14, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...atch-live-Nasas-New-Horizons-Pluto-flyby.html
> 
> live briefing



We want moar!!!

It figures that the end of the latest briefing on Pluto there was an advertisement by Neil deGrasse Tyson for something


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 14, 2015)

Norton said:


> It figures that the end of the latest briefing on Pluto there was an advertisement by Neil deGrasse Tyson for something



Cure all Snake Oil ?


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

Close up of @BiggieShady 's pic


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 14, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Close up of @BiggieShady 's pic
> 
> 
> View attachment 66506



Oh look, I see an alien base in that crater....LOL!


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

Pluto's atmosphere






Meanwhile, we’ve started sniffing nitrogen escaping from Pluto. Our models anticipated we’d start detecting traces of the atmosphere about a day out from closest approach, but instead we started picking up traces a full five days away. That time difference equates to much farther away: the probe started picking up ionized nitrogen at around 6 million kilometers away from the dwarf planet instead of the predicted 1 to 2.5 million kilometers.

The early detection of nitrogen could mean anything from the source being stronger than we thought to the atmosphere being stripped from the dwarf planet more rapidly than we’ve modelled. It could also means something more exotic, like a yet-to-be-determined process concentrating the escaped gas and our probe just coincidentally intercepting the stream. Distinguishing between the options is going to take a lot more data, during which we’ll also be learning what else is in Pluto’s atmosphere, and if Charon and Pluto actually share an atmosphere within their odd little system.


_NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI_


----------



## BiggieShady (Jul 14, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Oh look, I see an alien base in that crater....LOL!


Can't unsee it now, there is a huge road leading to it


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 14, 2015)

btarunr said:


> x86 is a very inefficient CPU architecture.


With all due respect, that's not the case anymore but it was true even very recently indeed. Some custom made new Intel technology found in tablets and mobile devices could end up in scientific "situations" in the future imo.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EPIC


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 14, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> With all due respect, that's not the case anymore but it was true even very recently indeed. Some custom made new Intel technology found in tablets and mobile devices could end up in scientific "situations" in the future imo.



True, and then ten years from now whenever a spacecraft arrives somewhere, younger versions of ourselves will be asking why we used inefficient and slow computer technology, even though we used the most current available.  It will always be so.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 14, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> Can't unsee it now, there is a huge road leading to it


 
 Truly!  I "see" a maglev rail-line heading underground a few miles away though.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

Is there someone waving?


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 14, 2015)

Beware the Flea's of Pluto  They Bite


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

Little fact
Disney’s Pluto the dog was first created in the same year that Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet. Venetia Burnley always insisted that "The name had nothing to do with the Disney cartoon. Mickey Mouse's dog was named after the planet, not the other way around." Disney's animators believed that Walt Disney chose the name to capitalize on the sensation of the newly named planet


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 14, 2015)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

This is Pluto and Charon in real colour, but exaggerated to emphasize the compositional differences. The image was taken by the New Horizons probe early in the morning of July 13 before its historic flyby.







At 3:38am on July 13, 2015, the New Horizons probe used three colour filters its Ralph instrument to capture the data for these enhanced colour images of Pluto and its largest moon Charon.
*The image is real colour, but not true colour: the red filter is mapped to red and so on, but this isn’t at all what you’d see with your naked eyes. The colours have been cranked to extremes to emphasize compositional differences. This is a composite image, reducing the distance between the worlds.
*











Little fact
It’s looking that Charon has a much older, more battered surface than Pluto, while Pluto’s smoother surface may indicate more active processes that erase signs of its age.
the surface features on Pluto and Charon trying to pry out their geological secrets just by shape,


----------



## MrGenius (Jul 14, 2015)

Found something cool a minute ago. They've got some informal name proposals for a few of the surface features. The pic is terrible. And I can't quite make out what they all are. The "whale" could wind up being called Cthulhu. Which I like the sounds of(seems most fitting). 




The rest appear to be:

Meng-p'o

Krun

Ala

Balrog

Vucub-Came

Hun-Came


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

According to IAU rules, Pluto's moons must be named after characters associated with the underworld in Greek and Roman mythology. This connection was deemed too tenuous in the case of Vulcan (the ancient Roman god of fire and volcanoes), SETI officials said, adding that the name has also already been used in astronomy. (For example, Vulcan was a hypothetical planet once thought to orbit between Mercury and the sun.)

The IAU accepted the second- and third-place finishers in the Pluto Rocks poll, so P4 and P5 are now officially known as Kerberos (the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld) and Styx (the river separating the land of the living from that of the dead), respectively.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

MrGenius said:


> Found something cool a minute ago. They've got some informal name proposals for a few of the surface features. The pic is terrible. And I can't quite make out what they all are. The "whale" could wind up being called Cthulhu. Which I like the sounds of(seems most fitting).
> View attachment 66517
> 
> The rest appear to be:
> ...




google those words. i doubt any of those would be used.

@MrGenius link to the place you found it please


----------



## MrGenius (Jul 14, 2015)

I found it by clicking the google doodle, and then the first link at the top of the page. But it ended up being sourced from here: https://twitter.com/StocktonSays/status/621022068252012544/photo/1

*The New, Nerdy Mythology of Pluto’s Place Names*
Once you have pictures of a never-before-seen-up-close almost-planet, you have to start naming what you see. And according to an image of from the New Horizons press room that our correspondent Nick Stockton tweeted earlier today, the Plutonians have started naming their surroundings…informally.

The names are all related to various mythologies of the underworld, appropriately enough. They also suggest that some of these researchers are pretty darn nerdy—though some of the names seem to have come from votes people submitted online during New Horizons’ flight.

Like, for example, “Cthulu,” the name of an elder god from the fiction of HP Lovecraft. Or what about “Balrog,” the name of the monster that seemingly killed Gandalf the Grey in the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy? Meng-p’o is the Buddhist goddess of forgetfulness and amnesia—she lives in the underworld. Hun-Came and Vucub-Came are Mayan death gods.

We thought at first that Krun was a reference to a Non-Player Character from the hellfire peninsula in World of Worldcraft, but he’s actually one of five lords of the underworld for the Mandaeans, an ancient religion from the Iraq-Iran region. (His nickname is “Mountain-of-Flesh.”) Ala is an underworld and harvest goddess of the Ibo people of eastern Nigeria.

Pluto might not technically be a planet, but it has some _great_ place-names.

Above directly quoted from this article.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

Here is a good start to naming features on Pluto.....(in my opinion)


Between 1901 and 2014, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded *567* times to *889* people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 860 individuals and *22* organizations.


----------



## haswrong (Jul 14, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> According to IAU rules, ................., respectively.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 14, 2015)

According to IAU rules, Pluto's moons must be named after characters associated with the underworld in Greek and Roman mythology

those are features not moons


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

The solar system contains dozens of objects that are large enough for self-gravity to make them round, and yet are not considered planets. They include the major moons of the planets, one asteroid, and many worlds in the Kuiper belt. The ones that we have visited with spacecraft are shown here to scale with each other. A couple of items on here are not quite round, illustrating the transition to smaller, lumpier objects


Pluto is on here just to be topical because as we all know Pluto is a planet  





_Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. _


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 15, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> The solar system contains dozens of objects that are large enough for self-gravity to make them round, and yet are not considered planets. They include the major moons of the planets, one asteroid, and many worlds in the Kuiper belt. The ones that we have visited with spacecraft are shown here to scale with each other. A couple of items on here are not quite round, illustrating the transition to smaller, lumpier objects
> 
> 
> Pluto is on here just to be topical because as we all know Pluto is a planet
> ...


I think it's funny that whoever did the illustration (which is very good btw), called our moon "The Moon", maybe not realizing that it too has a name: Luna.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 15, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> I think it's funny that whoever did the illustration (which is very good btw), called our moon "The Moon", maybe not realizing that it too has a name: Luna.



*Luna* is the Latin name for the Moon
Luna (goddess), the ancient Roman divine personification of the Moon

latin not widely spoken now


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK recumbus est. 

Goodnight Pluto


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 15, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> I think it's funny that whoever did the illustration (which is very good btw), called our moon "The Moon", maybe not realizing that it too has a name: Luna.


Iirc - in English astronomy - whatever you start with the capital letter means it's "ours", like there are galaxies, but the Galaxy == Milky way, there are suns but the Sun is the sun of the Solar system, even we could also call it Sol...etc. (This could have been changed tho, I read it a very long time ago.)


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 15, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> Iirc - in English astronomy - whatever you start with the capital letter means it's "ours", like there are galaxies, but the Galaxy == Milky way, there are suns but the Sun is the sun of the Solar system, even we could also call it Sol...etc. (This could have been changed tho, I read it a very long time ago.)



Very true, but that would normally be in an informal way.  On a science show, the physicists and astrononers would refer to the Galaxy as Milky Way.  Probably they would not call our moon Luna, I jist noticed that this Emily went trhough all the trouble to give names to all the other moons, and had already identified it as Earth's Moon, so in the name, it should have been its formal name to the lower right.

Anyway, not a big deal, I was just adding a bit of trivia.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

IT’S OFFICIAL: NEW Horizons is on the far side of Pluto. Its sensors have sensed, its hard drive is fat with data, and its radio dish is primed for the big downlink.






“We have a healthy spacecraft, we have recorded data of the Pluto system, and we’re outbound from Pluto,” says Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager, who was on the headphones receiving positive reports from all of New Horizons’ systems. Bowman, like the rest of the team, has had little sleep in the past few weeks. She received the space probe’s message on time, at 8:52:37pm ET, at mission operations here at John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Its contents? Nothing much. First a signal lock with the space craft—garnering a single clap from the room. That’s because those in the know were waiting for the telemetry—the data about New Horizons’ location in space: its pitch, roll, and yaw, the basic facts of its existence. New Horizons is safe.


----------



## RCoon (Jul 15, 2015)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

So far, only engineering data has been downloaded.
From Wednesday 5.50am ET (10.50am BST/7.50pm AEST), scientific data will begin to be transferred to mission control.
This will bring fresh images of Pluto – at 10 times the resolution of even the best pictures so far seen – as well as a wealth of information on the (dwarf) planet, as well as the moon Charon and its other satellites.
*These will be unveiled at a press conference on Wednesday at 3pm ET (8pm BST/Thursday 5am AEST).*
*



*


----------



## Ahhzz (Jul 15, 2015)

Bah... want pics NAAOOOWWW!!!


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

Spoiler


----------



## Caring1 (Jul 15, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Spoiler





Spoiler



Call that a space bar, this is a space bar.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 15, 2015)

and we occupy Sol 111 not Earth


----------



## revin (Jul 15, 2015)

""No one at APL on Tuesday seemed to care that astronomers in 2006 officially demoted Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet.”
*"The new images seemed to render that entire discussion moot"*""

Edit: Also there was a 100 second window, went in at 72 sec. ahead..............
After so many years think about it 72 seconds !!!!!!
Awesome, this made "Passing the White Glove Test" worth all the sweating !!!!!!!


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

Little fact
After New Horizons passes Pluto on Tuesday, it’ll continue traveling the Kuiper Belt, possibly making contact with another, smaller Kuiper Belt object (KBO) in 2018 or 2019. Pluto is just the beginning.

 The so-called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that it might fly-by include Quoar, Eris (close in size to Pluto), Makemake, Haumea or Sedna. In coming months, scientists will decide the spacecraft’s next target and send signals from Earth to New Horizons to thrust its rockets to tweak its trajectory.

Quoar




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50000_Quaoar

Eris and Dysnomia  (to the left)




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet)

Makemake




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makemake

Haumea.........i hope they go here, it has 2 moons. Hiʻiaka is above Haumea (centre), and Namaka is directly below




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haumea

Sedna




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna


----------



## RCoon (Jul 15, 2015)

My choice would either be Eris or Sedna, Sedna particularly. I always viewed it as "The Thing After Pluto"


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 15, 2015)

RCoon said:


> My choice would either be Eris or Sedna, Sedna particularly. I always viewed it as "The Thing After Pluto"








there are a few to chose from  main consideration will be where they will be when and if New horizons can intercept their orbit

Sedna





No pictures of Nemesis exist but it is speculated that it is out there and that it has an effect on trans-Neptunian objects

The trans-Neptunian object Sedna has an extra-long and unusual elliptical orbit around the Sun,[2] ranging between 76 and 975 AU. Sedna's orbit is estimated to last between 10.5 and 12 thousand years. Its discoverer, Michael Brown of Caltech, noted in a _Discover_ magazine article that Sedna's location seemed to defy reasoning: "Sedna shouldn't be there", Brown said. "There's no way to put Sedna where it is. It never comes close enough to be affected by the Sun, but it never goes far enough away from the Sun to be affected by other stars." Brown therefore postulated that a massive unseen object may be responsible for Sedna's anomalous orbit


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

*Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, cosmologist and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at University of Cambridge*

Hawking delivered his reaction in a video message posted to Facebook: "I would like to congratulate the New Horizons team and NASA on their pioneering, decade-long mission to explore the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt. Billions of miles from Earth, this little robotic spacecraft will show us the first glimpse of mysterious Pluto, the distant icy world at the very edge of our solar system. It is 50 years since the first successful mission to Mars, Mariner 4, sent back 21 images of the Red Planet. Now the solar system will be further opened to us, revealing the secrets of distant Pluto. The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed. We explore because we are human, and we want to know. I hope that Pluto will help us on that journey. I will be watching closely, and I hope you will, too."


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 15, 2015)

RCoon said:


>








Some artistic predictions (the second one is mind-blowing imo, even if he says otherwise, it's just breathtaking)









_"I'd like to claim prophetic powers, but the painting was guided by the reasonable assumption that Pluto likely has a periodically active atmosphere that distributes powdery exotic frosts into lowland areas. The reddish color of the higher features is caused by tholins – hydrocarbons common in the outer solar system. The partial circular arcs would be caused by flooding of craters by slushy exotic ices.  Pluto is apparently more orange than I painted it, however; I assumed the exotic ices would push colors more into the whites and grays."_


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 15, 2015)

PLUTO




150 miles across, note no impact craters, suggests an active surface. it is thought that some of these features are 11,000 feet high


----------



## MrGenius (Jul 16, 2015)

I'm not a big believer in Nemesis. There's plenty of other likely, and more plausible IMO, hypotheses.
I remember quite clearly when Sedna was originally announced as being a new planet. I went around telling people about the rarely heard of 10th planet for years afterwards. So it, like Pluto, will always be a planet in my eyes. Nobody that I've mentioned its existence to, until today, has ever known what the hell I was talking about.
What's this P4? And what happened to Kerberos?
They've announced an informal/unofficial name for Pluto's "heart". Tombaugh Regio.
*Tombaugh Regio* is the unofficial name of a prominent surface feature of the dwarf planet Pluto. A large, light-colored region about 1,590 km (990 mi) across, it has been nicknamed Pluto's "*heart*" by NASA and various media.

The region was first identified in the initial image of Pluto returned after the _New Horizons_ probe recovered from an anomaly that temporarily sent it into safe mode. NASA initially referred to it as a "heart" in reference to its overall shape. On July 15 the region was informally named Tombaugh Regio by NASA in honor of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. Regio being Latin for 'region'.

Subsequently collected data indicated that each of the two lobes of the heart are distinct, adjacent geological features that nevertheless share a bright appearance. The left lobe of the heart appeared smoother than the right, and they were slightly different colors. Early speculation was that the left lobe may be a large impact crater filled with nitrogen snow. Bright spots within the region were initially speculated to be mountain peaks. Photos released on July 15 revealed 11,000-foot mountains made of water ice in the feature.

The feature had been identified as a bright spot for six decades prior to the _New Horizons_ flyby, although it was impossible to image it with enough resolution to determine its shape. Over these six decades the spot had been observed to be dimming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(Pluto)

I hope you all get the chance to watch the hour long documentary _Direct From Pluto : The First Encounter_ on The Science Channel/Discovery Science. It's really worth seeing.
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/direct-from-pluto-first-encounter/


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 16, 2015)

Little fact
Campaigners have calculated that it costs $0.15 per American per year for the New Horizons mission.







As New Horizons begins to send back the first images of the Pluto system, there is a growing, and rather dark, list of names for the features scientists expect to see in them.

Named after the Roman god of the underworld itself, the mysterious reddish coloured planet could have a series of craters, canyons, plains and chasms named after dark gods and demons from different cultures.

Among those proposed are Ammit, the Egyptian goddess who devoured the souls of the sinful; Supay, the Inca's ruler of the underworld and Erlik, the underworld god in Mongolian mythology.

A number of fictional monsters, such as the Balrog from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Morgoth from the author's novel The Silmarillion have also been suggested.

Although none of the names have been officially adopted, they have been put forward as part of a proposal submitted to the International Astronomical Union by scientists at the SETI Institute as part of a public campaign called Our Pluto.

The names could transform the alien looking landscape of Pluto into a world filled with features that have emerged from the nightmares and deepest terrors of mankind.

Among the proposed list of names names is Mephistopheles, the demon in German folklore who bartains for Faust's soul in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.

Peklenc, the god of the underworld in Slavic mythology and Xargi, the ruler of the underworld from Siberian mythology, are also among those put forward.

Dr Jane Greaves, an astrophysicist at St Andrews University who has studied the atmosphere of Pluto, explained the theme may have been inspired by Pluto's distance from the sun.

She said: 'The names in astronomical systems usually form a family, so here the theme is the Underworld, I guess because of the darkness out at Pluto's orbit. Pluto's moon Nix is from a creation goddess though, so more like dawn than darkness.


----------



## Liquid Cool (Jul 16, 2015)

As someone who knows next to nothing about space flight...can someone enlighten me on how these orbiters floating out in space send pictures/messages back to earth, I've always been curious about this.  Seems a little far for wireless.....

Best,

Liquid Cool


----------



## 64K (Jul 16, 2015)

15 cents per American per year. I believe I can swing that. 
It's a shame that we haven't spent more on NASA for exploration.
I was 5 when watching men landing on the moon and only vaguely remember it but as a kid and a teen I fully expected that the program would continue and lead to a moon base at least. We have 600 billion to spend on military last year so that we can bully the world but very little for space and furthering scientific discovery.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 16, 2015)

New Horizons’ X-band communications system is the spacecraft’s link to Earth, returning science data, exchanging commands and status information, and allowing for precise radiometric tracking through NASA’s Deep Space Network of antenna stations. The system includes two broad-beam, low-gain antennas on opposite sides of the spacecraft for near-Earth communications: a 30-centimeter (12-inch) diameter medium-gain dish antenna and a large, 2.1-meter (83-inch) diameter high-gain dish antenna. The antenna assembly on the spacecraft’s top deck consists of the high, medium, and forward low-gain antennas; this stacked design provides a clear field of view for the low-gain antenna and structural support for the high and medium-gain dishes. Operators aim the antennas by turning the spacecraft toward Earth. The high-gain beam is only 0.3 degrees wide, so it must point directly at Earth. The medium-gain beam is wider (14 degrees), so it is used in conditions when the pointing might not be as accurate. All antennas have Right Hand Circular and Left Hand Circular polarization feeds. Data rates will depend on spacecraft distance, the power used to send the data and the size of the antenna on the ground. For most of the mission, New Horizons will use its high-gain antenna to exchange data with the Deep Space Network’s largest antennas, 70 meters across. Even then, because New Horizons will be more than 3 billion miles from Earth and radio signals will take more than four hours to reach the spacecraft, it can send information at about 700 bits per second. It will take nine months to send the full set of Pluto encounter science data back to Earth. New Horizons will fly the most advanced digital receiver ever used for deep space communications. Advances include regenerative ranging and low power – the receiver consumes 66% less power than current deep space receivers. The Radio Science Experiment (REX) to examine Pluto’s atmosphere is also integrated into the communications subsystem. The entire telecom system on New Horizons is redundant, with two of everything except the high gain antenna structure itself.

Deep Space Network
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html


----------



## RCoon (Jul 16, 2015)

64K said:


> 15 cents per American per year. I believe I can swing that.
> It's a shame that we haven't spent more on NASA for exploration.
> I was 5 when watching men landing on the moon and only vaguely remember it but as a kid and a teen I fully expected that the program would continue and lead to a moon base at least. We have 600 billion to spend on military last year so that we can bully the world but very little for space and furthering scientific discovery.



Shame both the US and the UK don't move their enormous NSA/GCHQ budget from spying on innocent civilians and pour it into space exploration. Then we can colonise other worlds and leave the politicians behind.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 16, 2015)

64K said:


> We have 600 billion to spend on military last year so that we can bully the world but very little for space and furthering scientific discovery.



Jump on the congress gravy train   oops Run for Congress


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 16, 2015)

Liquid Cool said:


> As someone who knows next to nothing about space flight...can someone enlighten me on how these orbiters floating out in space send pictures/messages back to earth, I've always been curious about this.  Seems a little far for wireless.....
> 
> Best,
> 
> Liquid Cool


First of all, if you talk about the New Horizons probe which just visited Pluto, it's not an orbiter unless you were thinking that it will (on the very long run) orbit the center of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
It communicates with radio signals (vaguely) similar to your mobile phone, but while your phone can receive and send signals in every direction, the probe uses directional radio antennas, which can amplify its signal, so it's still "strong" enough when it reaches Earth. To be more precise it has two broad-beam low-gain antennas (used when the probe was near Earth), a 12 inch (30 cm) medium-gain dish and a 83 inch (2.1 meter) high-gain dish. The high gain antenna (which is used to send data to us from Pluto) has a very narrow 0.3 degrees wide beam, so it must be pointing precisely towards Earth, and the medium-gain dish (which has 4 degrees wide beam) is used when accurate pointing is not possible,
New Horizons has a nuclear power source (RTG), but NASA was a bit short on Plutonium when they built the probe, so it can't use as much power for its instruments (including its antennas) as how it would be optimal, and it can only send data with 1KB/sec (note: because of that, even the "ancient" voyager 1 probe has a higher down-link speed).




When they want to receive or send data from or to the probe, the New Horizon ground team books a time-slot with Nasa's "Deep Space Network", which is a series of radio dishes all around the globe (USA, Spain and Australia) and it's used to communicate with pretty much everything NASA sent into space.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 16, 2015)

i found this, its  interesting


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 16, 2015)

This new image of an area on Pluto's largest moon Charon has a captivating feature -- a depression with a peak in the middle, shown here in the upper left corner of the inset. The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters. The image was taken at approximately 6:30 a.m. EDT on July 14, 2015, about 1.5 hours before closest approach to Pluto, from a range of 49,000 miles (79,000 kilometers).









NASA is planning to reveal more images at press conferences on Friday, 17 July, and a week later, on 24 July. After that, downloads of image data from the spacecraft will pause until September, while the mission concentrates on retrieving near real-time data from particle and plasma measuring instruments.

Little fact
Atmospheric surface pressure is currently about 100,000 times less than on Earth, about 600 times less than on Mars.


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 17, 2015)

Pluto's mountains in 3D: http://i.imgur.com/ZiRD56E.gifv

Question to the mods: what do I need to do to make this appear on TPU?


----------



## rtwjunkie (Jul 17, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> Pluto's mountains in 3D: http://i.imgur.com/ZiRD56E.gifv
> 
> Question to the mods: what do I need to do to make this appear on TPU?


 
Obviously not a mod, but simply load it up on TPU's image-hosting right here: http://www.techpowerup.org/
Then in a thread on forums, click the landscaspe picture above where you are typing and instert the TPU URL.  Don't know if it can handle GIF's or not.  One that big, I think they might say no.


----------



## RCoon (Jul 17, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> Pluto's mountains in 3D: http://i.imgur.com/ZiRD56E.gifv
> 
> Question to the mods: what do I need to do to make this appear on TPU?



Not sure about .webm support, asked w1z about it previously but there was no real inclination towards it. W1z is away for a while on holiday for now.

I quite like .webm's, vastly superior to .gifs.


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 17, 2015)

RCoon said:


> I quite like .webm's, vastly superior to .gifs.



Thanks for the answer (hope W1z has a good time). I also quite like it (especially on mobile) I just need to make the time and read after if it poses any (special) security risk compared to other media formats. I love to read and learn about network and security subjects, but somehow did not have time for webm.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 17, 2015)

A quick heads up on the imminent press release
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html


----------



## MrGenius (Jul 17, 2015)

One piece of the newly expanded ground we're seeing here shows a section of Pluto near the Southern pole of Pluto. As Jeff Moore, New Horizons Co-Investigator, NASA Ames explained, this image is North and South as we'd expect to see it on a standard map.




You'll see two areas marked with brand new names. _First we'll be seeing the Norgay Montes area in images below, then an area within the Sputnik Planum region._

"This terrain is not easy to explain," said Moore, "the discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations."

Again, this area goes by the name of "Sputnik Planum" (Sputnik Plain) after the Earth’s first artificial satellite.

"This are could be a hundred million years old, but it could have geological processes still active today," said Moore. "All of this suggests that Pluto has had a long and complicated geological past,

"This is a vast, crater less plains that has a very interesting story to tell."





The next image you're seeing here shows a place where the crew believe they've found wind streaks. Winds would be traveling from a North-West to South-Eastly direction, if these images are indeed indicators of wind.

"With the flyby in the rearview mirror," said Jim Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, "a decade-long journey to Pluto is over --but, the science payoff is only beginning. Data from New Horizons will continue to fuel discovery for years to come."

http://www.slashgear.com/new-horizons-reveal-plutos-wildly-varied-landscape-17393399/

____________________________________






*In the center left of Pluto's vast heart-shaped feature lies a vast, crater-less plain than is suspected to be no more than 100 million years old. Slide left to see an annotated view of the region, dubbed Pluto's Sputnik Planum. Mounds and fields of small pits are visible across the surface, alongside irregularly shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs, some of which contain darker material*��

In the latest data from New Horizons, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes.

This frozen region is north of Pluto's icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature, informally named 'Tombaugh Regio' after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

'This terrain is not easy to explain,' said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI). 'The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations.'

This fascinating icy plains region - resembling frozen mud cracks on Earth - has been informally named 'Sputnik Planum' (Sputnik Plain) after the Earth's first artificial satellite.

It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, roughly 12 miles (20km) across, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs.

Some of these troughs have darker material within them, while others are traced by clumps of hills that appear to rise above the surrounding terrain.

Elsewhere, the surface appears to be etched by fields of small pits that may have formed by a process called sublimation, in which ice turns directly from solid to gas, just as dry ice does on Earth.

Scientists have two working theories as to how these segments were formed.

The irregular shapes may be the result of the contraction of surface materials, similar to what happens when mud dries.





New Horizons also released its first up-close image of Nix — one of Pluto's five known moons, named after the Greek goddess of darkness and night.

Mission scientists believe the image shows one end of an elongated body about 25 miles (40km) in diameter.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3165555/The-solar-saved-best-Nasa-releases-stunning-images-mountains-vast-icy-plains-mysterious-heart-dwarf-planet.html#ixzz3gAwmM3IH


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 17, 2015)

CO2 concentrations




@MrGenius




The most recent impression of NIX


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 21, 2015)

The latest photos from the July 14 Pluto flyby were released by NASA on Tuesday






Pluto’s moon Nix (left), shown here in enhanced colour as imaged by the New Horizons Ralph instrument, has a reddish spot that has attracted the interest of mission scientists.  The data were obtained on the morning of July 14, 2015, and received on the ground on July 18.  At the time the observations were taken New Horizons was about 102,000 miles (165,000 km) from Nix. The image shows features as small as approximately 2 miles (3 kilometers) across on Nix, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.

Pluto’s small, irregularly shaped moon Hydra (right) is revealed in this black and white image taken from New Horizons’ LORRI instrument on July 14, 2015, from a distance of about 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers). Features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) are visible on Hydra, which measures 34 miles (55 kilometers) in length.

While Pluto’s largest moon Charon has grabbed most of the lunar spotlight so far, these two smaller and lesser-known satellites are now getting some attention.  Nix and Hydra – the second and third moons to be discovered – are approximately the same size, but their similarity ends there.

New Horizons’ first color image of Pluto’s moon Nix, in which colours have been enhanced, reveals an intriguing  region on the jelly bean-shaped satellite, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.

Although the overall surface colour of Nix is neutral grey in the image, the newfound region has a distinct red tint.  Hints of a bull’s-eye pattern lead scientists to speculate that the reddish region is a crater. “Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings,” said mission scientist Carly Howett, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. She added, “This observation is so tantalizing, I’m finding it hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked.” 

Meanwhile, the sharpest image yet received from New Horizons of Pluto’s satellite Hydra shows that its irregular shape resembles the state of Michigan. The new image was made by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers), and shows features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. There appear to be at least two large craters, one of which is mostly in shadow. The upper portion looks darker than the rest of Hydra, suggesting a possible difference in surface composition. From this image, mission scientists have estimated that Hydra is 34 miles (55 kilometers) long and 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide. Commented mission science collaborator Ted Stryk of Roane State Community College in Tennessee, “Before last week, Hydra was just a faint point of light, so it's a surreal experience to see it become an actual place, as we see its shape and spot recognizable features on its surface for the first time.”

Images of Pluto’s most recently discovered moons, Styx and Kerberos, are expected to be transmitted to Earth no later than mid-October.

Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005 using Hubble Space Telescope data by a research team led by New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. New Horizons’ findings on the surface characteristics and other properties of Nix and Hydra will help scientists understand the origins and subsequent history of Pluto and its moons.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 22, 2015)

A newly discovered mountain range lies near the southwestern margin of Pluto’s Tombaugh Regio, between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain. This image was taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000km) and received on Earth on July 20. Features as small as a half-mile (1km) across are visible.






This newest image shows the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.

'There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,' said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI).

'There's a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we're still trying to understand.'
While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old - the darker region probably dates back billions of years. 

Moore claims that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters.


----------



## R-T-B (Jul 22, 2015)

> Moore claims that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters.



Pluto can heal?

It's ALIVE!


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 24, 2015)

New Horizons scientists use enhanced colour images to detect differences in the composition and texture of Pluto’s surface. The ‘heart of the heart’, Sputnik Planum, is suggestive of a source region of ices. The two bluish-white ‘lobes’ that extend to the south-west and north-east of the ‘heart’ may represent exotic ices being transported away from Sputnik Planum. Photograph: Nasa


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 25, 2015)

More info at the source: _http://www.penny4nasa.org/2015/07/24/nasa-captures-stunning-image-of-pluto-eclipsing-the-sun/_


----------



## dorsetknob (Aug 25, 2015)

http://www.space.com/30338-pluto-fly-by-video-from-new-horizons-images-by-bjorn-jonsson.html


----------



## BiggieShady (Aug 27, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> http://www.space.com/30338-pluto-fly-by-video-from-new-horizons-images-by-bjorn-jonsson.html


Fantastic how atmosphere is visible when it's looked at from the dark side ... shitload of atmosphere and they said it was not a planet


----------



## dorsetknob (Aug 31, 2015)

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has a new target to aim for following its historic flyby of Pluto.
It is called 2014 MU69,





  and was one of two comet-like objects that were under consideration by scientists working on the mission.
The US space agency will now carry out a review of the plan before officially approving the mission's extension.
New Horizons carried out its flyby of Pluto in July, approaching to 12,500km from the dwarf planet's surface.
The spacecraft captured detailed images and other data not only of Pluto, but also of its moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
The new target is about a billion and a half km beyond Pluto. It is about 45km across and is thought to be one of the building blocks from which bigger worlds such as Pluto are formed.
Such objects form a region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, containing a deep-freeze sample of what our cosmic neighbourhood was like when it formed 4.6 billion years ago.
"Even as the New Horizon's spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer," said John Grunsfeld, head of Nasa's Science Mission Directorate.
"We expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission, while still providing new and exciting science."
The spacecraft carries enough hydrazine fuel for another flyby, and scientists say it could continue operating into the late 2020s or beyond.
The mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern, called Nasa's selection of 2014 MU69 "a great choice".
He added: "This KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen."
In summer 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope was used to discover five icy objects, later narrowed to two, within New Horizons' flight path.
In late October and early November, the spacecraft will perform a series of engine burns to set its course toward 2014 MU69 ahead of an encounter currently set for 1 January 2019.





_New Horizons'_ trajectory and the orbits of Pluto and 2014 MU


----------



## Ikaruga (Sep 2, 2015)

Four images from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the spacecraft's Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).




source


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 7, 2015)

New Horizons probe sends important data about Pluto to Earth

Seven weeks after New Horizons sped past the Pluto system to study the unexplored world, the mission team has begun the intensive downlinking of the massive data the spacecraft collected and stored on its digital recorders.

The process moved into high gear on 5 September with the entire downlink taking about one year to complete.




Pluto as seen from New Horizons. Image credit: Twitter @NASA

"These images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.

"It is the best datasets, the highest-resolution images and spectra, the most important atmospheric datasets, and more. It's a treasure trove," he added in a NASA statement.

Even moving at light speed, the radio signals from New Horizons containing data need more than four and a half hours to cover the three billion miles to reach Earth.

Since late July, New Horizons has only been sending back lower data-rate information collected by the energetic particle, solar wind and space dust instruments.

The pace picked up considerably on 5 September as it resumed sending flyby images and other data.

During the data downlink phase, the spacecraft transmits science and operations data to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) of antenna stations, which also provide services to other missions, like Voyager.

"The New Horizons mission has required patience for many years, but from the small amount of data we saw around the Pluto flyby, we know the results to come will be well worth the wait," added Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University.

The team also plans to continue posting new, unprocessed pictures from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons project website each Friday.
https://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/lorri-gallery


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 11, 2015)

New Horizons sends back incredible new high resolution images that reveal 'bewildering array' of features from ice flows and valleys to dunes





This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA?s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto's equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across.





This 220-mile (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet. The image includes dark, ancient heavily cratered terrain; bright, smooth geologically young terrain; assembled masses of mountains; and an enigmatic field of dark, aligned ridges that resemble dunes; its origin is under debate. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. This image was taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).






This image of Pluto's largest moon Charon, taken by NASA?s New Horizons spacecraft 10 hours before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 290,000 miles (470,000 kilometers), is a recently downlinked, much higher quality version of a Charon image released on July 15.


Images downlinked in the past few days have more than doubled the amount of Pluto's surface seen at resolutions as good as 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel. 
They reveal new features as diverse as possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows that apparently oozed out of mountainous regions onto plains, and even networks of valleys that may have been carved by material flowing over Pluto's surface. 

They also show large regions that display chaotically jumbled mountains reminiscent of disrupted terrains on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. 

'The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,' said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. 

'The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.'


New images also show the most heavily cratered -- and thus oldest -- terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains. 

There might even be a field of dark wind-blown dunes, among other possibilities.

'Seeing dunes on Pluto -- if that is what they are -- would be completely wild, because Pluto's atmosphere today is so thin,' said William B. McKinnon, a GGI deputy lead from Washington University, St. Louis. 'Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven't figured out is at work. It's a head-scratcher.'

Discoveries being made from the new imagery are not limited to Pluto's surface. 

Better images of Pluto's moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra will be released Friday at the raw images site for New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), revealing that each moon is unique and that big moon Charon's geological past was a tortured one.

Images returned in the past days have also revealed that Pluto's global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized, and that the haze actually creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, making them visible to the cameras aboard New Horizons.

'This bonus twilight view is a wonderful gift that Pluto has handed to us,' said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from SwRI. 

'Now we can study geology in terrain that we never expected to see.'

The New Horizons spacecraft is now more than 3 billion miles (about 5 billion kilometers) from Earth, and more than 43 million miles (69 million kilometers) beyond Pluto. 

asa recently selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system.

It will become the first spacecraft to visit the icy blocks encircling our solar system in a ring of debris called the Kuiper Belt.

The fridge sized craft will head to a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

'Even as the New Horizon's spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer,' said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and chief of the Nasa Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington.

'While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science.' 

Like all Nasa missions that have finished their main objective but seek to do more exploration, the New Horizons team must write a proposal to the agency to fund a KBO mission.

That proposal – due in 2016 – will be evaluated by an independent team of experts before Nasa can decide about the go-ahead.

Early target selection was important; the team needs to direct New Horizons toward the object this year in order to perform any extended mission with healthy fuel margins.


----------



## Drone (Sep 11, 2015)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 11, 2015)

These new images are the first to be sent from the spacecraft since shortly after it flew past the Pluto system in July of this year. This is the beginning of an “intensive” downlink session that will last for a year or more, sending back the 50 gigabits or so of data the spacecraft collected and stored on its digital recorders during the flyby. These new images are “selected high priority” data-sets that the science team has been anxiously waiting for.

The new images are “lossless” — meaning the data sent back from the New Horizon spacecraft is using a type of data compression algorithms that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data. Planetary astronomer Alex Parker said on Twitter that this means the even views we’ve seen in the previous Pluto images from New Horizons are much sharper and crisper.






This image of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, processed in two different ways, shows how Pluto’s bright, high-altitude atmospheric haze produces a twilight that softly illuminates the surface before sunrise and after sunset, allowing the sensitive cameras on New Horizons to see details in nighttime regions that would otherwise be invisible. The right-hand version of the image has been greatly brightened to bring out faint details of rugged haze-lit topography beyond Pluto’s terminator, which is the line separating day and night. The image was taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

You can see all the latest imagery sent back from New Horizons at this website.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 11, 2015)

I really like these ones 

2015-07-14

08:27:37 UTC

Exp: 150 msec

Target: PLUTO

Range: 0.2M km

















Monday marks two months from New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto on July 14, following a journey from Cape Canaveral, Florida, spanning 3 billion miles and 9½ years. As of Friday, the spacecraft was 44 million miles past Pluto.


----------



## Ikaruga (Sep 12, 2015)

New mosaic:


----------



## Drone (Sep 12, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Sep 15, 2015)

Hydra & Nix


----------



## Drone (Sep 16, 2015)

New images


----------



## Drone (Sep 16, 2015)

part II


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 17, 2015)

This July 14, 2015 photo released by NASA on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015 shows the atmosphere and surface features of Pluto, lit from behind by the sun. It was made 15 minutes after the New Horizons' spacecraft's closest approach.





In this small section of the larger crescent image of Pluto, the setting sun illuminates a fog or near-surface haze, which is cut by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers), and the width of the image is 115 miles (185km)

Images downlinked in the past few days have more than doubled the amount of Pluto's surface seen at resolutions as good as 400 metres per pixel.


'The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,' said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at Nasa's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

'The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.'

New images also show the most heavily cratered, and oldest, terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains.

There might even be a field of dark wind-blown dunes, among other possibilities.

'Seeing dunes on Pluto - if that is what they are - would be completely wild, because Pluto's atmosphere today is so thin,' said William B. McKinnon, a GGI deputy lead from Washington University, St. Louis. 'Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven't figured out is at work. It's a head-scratcher.'

Discoveries being made from the new imagery are not limited to Pluto's surface.

Better images of Pluto's moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra will be released Friday at the raw images site for New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), revealing that each moon is unique and that big moon Charon's geological past was a tortured one.

Images returned in the past days have also revealed that Pluto's global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realised, and that the haze actually creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, making them visible to the cameras aboard New Horizons.

'This bonus twilight view is a wonderful gift that Pluto has handed to us,' said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from SwRI.

'Now we can study geology in terrain that we never expected to see.'

The New Horizons spacecraft is now more than 3 billion miles (about 5 billion kilometers) from Earth, and more than 43 million miles (69 million kilometers) beyond Pluto.

The spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.


Earlier this month Nasa revealed a new animation of New Horizon's mission to Pluto lets you ride shotgun with the probe as it passes the dwarf planet.

New Horizons completed its near decade-long journey to Pluto in July, with a historic flyby that captures the best images ever seen of the icy world.

Nasa has now collected these images into a mesmerising 23-second video, showing the flyby from the spacecraft's point of view.

During its closest approach, the spacecraft came to within 7,800 miles (12,500km) of Pluto's icy surface, travelling at 30,800 mph (49,600 km/h).

The video includes a pass showing the atmospheric glow of Pluto lit by the sun and a look at Charon, Pluto's largest moon.
shed new light on Pluto’s mountains, glaciers and plains.
'This animation, made with real images taken by New Horizons, begins with Pluto flying in for its close-up on July 14,' Nasa writes on the video description.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Sep 17, 2015)

Wish we would find life already.


----------



## Ikaruga (Sep 18, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Wish we would find life already.


We already found it with ALH84001, even Clinton announced it, but people want little green man or gtfo.


----------



## R-T-B (Sep 18, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> We already found it with ALH84001, even Clinton announced it, but people want little green man or gtfo.



Unfortunately, ALH84001 is not conclusive proof.  It is pretty strong evidence though.


----------



## dorsetknob (Sep 18, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> Unfortunately, ALH84001 is not conclusive proof. It is pretty strong evidence though.



On the downside

Only way to prove that is a boots on the ground Manned mission or a lucky Sample return mission
Not going to happen (in the next 50 years anyway)

on the upside

They cannot disprove it


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 18, 2015)

15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere.
The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute





Ice (probably frozen nitrogen) that appears to have accumulated on the uplands on the right side of this 390-mile (630-kilometer) wide image is draining from Pluto’s mountains onto the informally named Sputnik Planum through the 2- to 5-mile (3- to 8- kilometer) wide valleys indicated by the red arrows. The flow front of the ice moving into Sputnik Planum is outlined by the blue arrows. The origin of the ridges and pits on the right side of the image remains uncertain.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute





This image covers the same region as the image above, but is re-projected from the oblique, backlit view shown in the new crescent image of Pluto.


----------



## Drone (Sep 19, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Sep 23, 2015)

two "new" images
 (different filters)


----------



## Drone (Sep 25, 2015)

New big ass pngs, take a lot of time to load, so just click and see

http://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/wp-content/uploads/sites/253/2015/09/nh-Figure22.png
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pmap_pmc195_8092-shenk.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/lorri_rider.png
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/detail_lorri_rider.jpg


----------



## Drone (Sep 25, 2015)

Part II






Methane Map

Giant pic of Pluto


----------



## Ikaruga (Sep 26, 2015)

Beautiful




Original 8000x8000 (65MB) version: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/crop_p_color2_enhanced_release.png


----------



## twilyth (Sep 27, 2015)

A couple more photos here - http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-pluto-photos-in-color-2015-9


----------



## Drone (Oct 1, 2015)

Charon


----------



## Drone (Oct 2, 2015)

Nice hq footage


----------



## dorsetknob (Oct 2, 2015)

how to obtain your own model of Charon  





Buy a packet of Maltesers insert one sweet into mouth  suck off most of the chocolate skin 
spit out the core of the sweet   and there your small moon Charon





Any one else notice the cosmic similarity ?

the Universe gods of Fate only suck Maltesers  either that or some one at NASA is photoshopping their sweets


----------



## dorsetknob (Oct 3, 2015)

New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced colour view of Charon just before its closest approach on 14 July this year.
_Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_

_The smoothness of plains on Charon, researchers have theorised, may suggest that a type of cold volcanic activity – known as cryovolcanism – had occurred on the moon.

“The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said New Horizons' team member Paul Schenk from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston_


----------



## Drone (Oct 7, 2015)

New images of Hydra and Nix


----------



## dorsetknob (Oct 9, 2015)

New colour photo of Pluto's Atmosphere





*New Horizons: Probe captures Pluto's blue hazes*
The New Horizons mission has returned its first colour image of Pluto's atmospheric hazes and shows them to have a blue tinge.

It is a consequence of the way sunlight is scattered by haze particles, say scientists.
The US space agency probe continues to downlink the information gathered during its historic flyby of the dwarf planet on 14 July.
As this data arrives on Earth, the team processes it and studies it.
A black and white image of the hazes was previously released, showing them to be as high as 130km above Pluto's surface.
That picture came from the Lorri camera and was acquired as New Horizons departed the dwarf, looking back to see sunlight skim the edge of the distant world.
This new view comes from the Ralph colour camera system. Again, it is taken with Pluto backlit.
Like Earth, the dwarf has a predominantly nitrogen atmosphere (albeit much more sparse).
But it is the interaction of this nitrogen with the Sun's ultraviolet light, in presence of another atmospheric constituent, methane, that is able to create the chunky haze particles.
"That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles," said New Horizons team member Carly Howett from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
"A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger - but still relatively small - soot-like particles we call tholins."
The principal investigator on the mission, Alan Stern, had teased Pluto fans in recent days, telling them to expect something special from this week's regular Thursday release of new images.
"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," he said in a Nasa statement.
If you stood on Pluto and looked straight up, the sky would actually appear black because of the rarity of the atmosphere.
"The haze is pretty thin, so you'd mostly see the colour of the haze as blue sunrises and sunsets," Dr Howett explained to BBC News.
The other important piece of news to come out concerns the detection of water-ice at many locations on the 2,300km-wide dwarf's surface.
The other important piece of news to come out concerns the detection of water-ice at many locations on the 2,300km-wide dwarf's surface.
More volatile ices tend to dominate the surface, so understanding why the water-ice is seen strongly in some places is an interesting observation that will need to be followed up, the team says.
"We expected water-ice to be there, but we've searched for water-ice in Pluto's spectrum for decades and not seen it before now," tweeted Alex Parker, also from SwRI.
Since 14 July, New Horizons has moved more than 100 million km beyond Pluto. And this puts it about five billion km from Earth.
The vast separation makes for very low data rates. It will be well into 2016 before all the information is on the ground.

Care of bbc


----------



## Drone (Oct 9, 2015)

Bigger image and article from New Horizons

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/nh-finds-blue-skies-and-water-ice-on-pluto


----------



## Drone (Oct 12, 2015)

new images of Charon























"Close-up" of Styx






Pluto's "blue-skies" close-up


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 15, 2015)

As first reported by spacebuff  @dorsetknob  in post #166 there is further news as to the future of New Horizons






Our target, 2014 MU69 (initially dubbed "PT1" for Potential Target 1), was found in 2014 by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a dedicated search for New Horizons KBO targets. Actually, HST found several potential targets, but this one was selected for several reasons. One is that it is the most accessible — New Horizons will need the least fuel and shortest flight time to reach it. But 2014 MU69 also hits the sweet spot scientifically. It's about 45 km across (assuming a 4% surface reflectivity), and it's a member of the "cold, classical" dynamical population of objects that formed right there in the Kuiper Belt directly from the primordial solar nebula. -

ollowing NASA's approval of 2014 MU69 in August, we began planning a series of trajectory adjustments so that New Horizons can get there. Those engine burns will take place between October 22nd and November 4th. The result of that will be a roughly 1,150-day flight of about a billion miles, culminating with an intercept on January 1, 2019, at a point 44.2 a.u. from the Sun. The flyby speed will be 14.4 km (8.9 miles) per second.

This flyby is contingent on NASA approving and funding a 4-year extension to the New Horizons mission — a decision planned for late summer 2016 (about when the last of our Pluto data reaches Earth). If that approval comes, then along the way to 2014 MU69 the spacecraft will also make observations of the heliosphere using our SWAP and PEPSSI plasma instruments, our dust impact counter, and our ultraviolet spectrograph.

We'll also be taking images of about 20 other KBOs that New Horizons will pass distantly. We won't see them resolved, but the resulting images will allow us to study how light reflects off their surfaces at varying Sun-object-camera angles — the kind of photometric studies of their surface properties that can't be made from Earth. We'll also use the spacecraft's camera to search more deeply for satellites around these KBOs than any Earth-based instrument or Hubble can do. These studies of small KBO surface properties and satellite populations will be a significant and completely unique contribution that only New Horizons can make.

Of course, the main science of the KBO mission, if funded, will be the flyby of 2014 MU69 itself. Our objectives for that flyby include:


mapping the surface geology to learn how it formed and has evolved
measuring the surface temperature
mapping the 3D surface topography
mapping the surface composition to learn how it is similar to and how it is different from comets like 67P and small planets like Pluto
searching for any signs of activity, such as a cloud-like coma
searching for (and studying any) satellites or rings
measuring or constraining its mass



Astronomers don't yet know the exact shape of "PT1" (2014 MU69), but its estimated 45-km diameter is much larger than that of a typical comet.
_NASA / JHU-APL / SWRI_

Our team is already determining how close we can come to 2014 MU69. We hope to approach much closer than we did to Pluto, so that the imaging and spectral observations collected will have higher resolution than we obtained at Pluto. We also intend to employ all seven of the instruments aboard New Horizons. If the extended mission is approved, we'll build a much more detailed encounter observation plan in 2017 followed by development and testing the following year.

We expect New Horizons to begin making observations of 2014 MU69 in October 2018, beginning with satellite searches and navigation sightings to home in on the target. We won't see it resolved as a disk (or whatever shape it has) until the spacecraft begins its intensive operations just a few days before the encounter.

So mark January 1, 2019, on your long-range calendar. Although this flyby probably won't be as dramatic as the exploration of Pluto we just completed, it will be a record-setter for the most distant exploration of an object ever made. It will also be a KBO science bonanza — something we'll share with you and the world — that's unlikely to be repeated for decades.

- http://www.skyandtelescope.com/alanstern


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 16, 2015)

Pluto science paper from New Horizons data highlights new mysteries
CBC NewsPosted: Oct 15, 2015 4:03 PM ET









Scientists have releasedmore published scientific results from July's historic flyby of Pluto and its moons, highlighting new discoveries and the new mysteries that have arisen with those discoveries.

A new paper published in Science today by the New Horizons team, led by principal investigator Alan Stern, summarizes what scientists have learned from data collected by the New Horizons spacecraft during the first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14.


*New Horizons spacecraft finds blue skies, frozen water on Pluto*
*Pluto images show possible dunes, jumbled mountains*
Here are 3 mysteries they highlight.

*What's reshaping Pluto's surface?*
*



*
Pluto's surface is covered in a range of features from mountains to plains, and different kinds of ice that range from bright and shiny to very dark red in colour.

Some areas appear to be shaped by glaciers and by ice that vapourizes in some areas and redeposits in others, especially on the plains near the planet's equator.

The formation of mountains and other geological reshaping seems to have happened recently, puzzling researchers.

"This raises questions of how such processes were powered so long after the formation of the Pluto system," they wrote.

They note that on most other icy bodies in the solar system – mostly moons —  that kind of reshaping is powered by tides that make certain regions bulge and create heat from friction during the motion.




"But these are not a viable heat source today for Pluto or Charon," the researchers added.





The formation of mountains and other geological reshaping seems to have happened recently, puzzling researchers. 'This raises questions of how such processes were powered so long after the formation of the Pluto system,' they wrote. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

*What's that dark spot on Charon's north pole?*





Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is mostly pale-coloured, but there's "puzzling dark terrain" on its north pole.

One possible explanation scientists have come up with is that during colder times, gases deposit there, then radiation chemically transforms them into coloured compounds called tholins that are heavier and less likely to vaporize during warmer times.





Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is mostly pale-coloured, but there's 'puzzling dark terrain' on its north pole. (NASA/Southwest Research Institute)


*Why are Nix and Hydra so bright and shiny?*
*



*
Measurements show that two of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra, are covered by the ice we're most familiar with – frozen water.




That ice is unexpectedly clean and bright.

"How such bright surfaces can be maintained on Nix and Hydra over billions of years is puzzling," the researchers wrote.

Billions of years of radiation and impacts from darker material such a meteorites should have made them turn darker and redder over time.







Another interesting discovery made by New Horizons but not mentioned in the new paper  is that unlike Earth's moon – and likely most if not all other moons in the solar system – Nix and Hydra don't always face the same side toward Pluto.

"We now believe Nix and Hydra are spinning really fast and rotating in an odd way, and may be the only regular moons, meaning satellites that are near their host planets, which do not always point the same face toward their primary body," said Douglas Hamilton, a University of Maryland researcher who co-authored the new Science paper, in a statement.

That may be because of Pluto's largest moon Charon, which doesn't just orbit Pluto, but also has Pluto in its orbit, as a kind of "binary planet" system.





"It's possible that Nix and Hydra can't focus on locking one face toward Pluto because Charon keeps sweeping past and stirring things up."

*Why is the sky blue?*



New Horizons gave us more than a look at the surface of Pluto. Scientists were also interested in Pluto's atmosphere and the rate at which particles escape the globe’s weak gravitational pull. Pluto’s sky was revealed to be a familiar color, caused by red or gray particles which reflect a blue haze when touched by sunlight. The sun’s impact on the particles creates what are called tholins. When those tholins break up, they fall to the surface, leaving a red stain on the dwarf planet. Water ice also appears bright red, and this relationship remains a mystery.

(i told you Pluto was blue )






New Horizons is still in the process of sending data from its flyby back to Earth, a process that will take nearly another year.



Spoiler: pluto makes me smile












Just a little interesting one in case anyone has read this far


----------



## R-T-B (Oct 16, 2015)

That's what I love about space.  One question answered, 100 more revealed.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 16, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> That's what I love about space.  One question answered, 100 more revealed.



its exactly the same with Mrs Jones......shame shes only in the other room and not billions of miles away, i could easily avoided her with a slight mathematical computation years ago


----------



## Drone (Oct 16, 2015)

bigger version


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 16, 2015)

Smilier Version


----------



## Drone (Oct 17, 2015)

Patterns and pits on Pluto

















Charon close-ups


----------



## Drone (Oct 18, 2015)

Charon close-up

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/pluto-moon-charon-up-close


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 20, 2015)

Why has a huge part of Pluto never been hit by asteroids?

FRESHLY beamed back close-up images of Pluto have baffled scientists as to why a huge area of the dwarf planet appears to have never been struck by an asteroid, meteor or comet.







The latest image, from the centre of Pluto’s "heart feature", show the plains’ enigmatic cellular pattern as well as unusual clusters of small pits and troughs (from lower left to upper right in the picture).

But the high-resolution image has shown no evidence of even any small impact craters, which riddle the surface of the rest of Pluto.

Scientists believe this area, informally known as Sputnik Planum, is composed of volatile ices such as solid nitrogen. 





They theorize the pits and troughs, which are typically hundreds of meters across and tens of meters deep, are possibly formed by sublimation or evaporation of these ices. 

However, the reasons for the striking shapes and alignments of these features are a mystery. 

A Nasa spokesman said: "Adding to the intrigue is that even at this resolution, no impact craters are seen, testifying to the extreme geologic youth of Sputnik Planum."

Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said: "Pluto is weird, in a good way.

“The pits, and the way they’re aligned, provide clues about the ice flow and the exchange of volatiles between the surface and atmosphere, and the science team is working hard to 

understand what physical processes are at play here.”





*Pluto could hold life...with still more to come*
THIS is the latest close up image of a strange crater on Pluto which means the dwarf planet could still potentially be active, increasing the chance of it housing microscopic life.










NASA'S latest images of Pluto show the best yet glimpses of a deep crater on its surface which one of its scientists said could mean it is still an active planet…and therefore potentially capable of supporting life.

The striking feature is a large crater that appears to have a peak in the middle, which gives it the appearance of a letter C around it.

It also has two long scars or fault lines running away from it

This would mean it would still have a warm core with earthquakes or volcanoes possible on the surface.

Impact craters are usually eroded through geological processes such as earthquakes, meaning the planet is or was recently "active".

A warm centre would mean more chance of water - the trigger for early life - being beneath Pluto's frozen surface, which Nasa had previously speculated may be the case.

Mr Grinspoon told us: "The C looks to me like an eroded impact crater."

Due to Pluto's -229C average temperature, he said the lines were extremely unlikely to have been caused by water.

He said: "I don’t see anything that looks like signs of fluid flow. If there was it wouldn’t be water because it is far too cold there."

However, he believed the lines could be further signs of former activity, adding: "There are some linear looking features which might be some kind of tectonic boundaries. But we really don’t know.


----------



## Drone (Oct 21, 2015)

PlutoTime Mosaic

PlutoTime Charon Mosaic

PlutoTime Pluto and Charon Mosaic


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 21, 2015)

Harvard-Smithsonian Center debate comes to conclusion that Pluto IS a planet






Recently the Harvard-Smithsonian Center did something about it: It held a debate — pro and con — and let the audience vote. The result: “Pluto IS a planet.”

The debate centered around the IAU’s demands of a planet — that it must:


be in orbit around the Sun,
be round or nearly round, and
be shown to have “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit, be gravitationally dominant in its area
Pluto was originally kicked out because it did not “clear the neighborhood.” It is indeed small. It has a radius of about 750 miles — less than 20 per cent of the Earth’s radius. Its circumference is about 4,500 miles, which makes it smaller than the moon. You could fly around its equator faster than flying from Washington, DC, to Hawaii.

The vote doesn’t bind anyone. But, for Pluto enthusiasts, it’s a start.






The changing landscape of the Solar System




https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/


----------



## dorsetknob (Oct 21, 2015)

its always been a planet (now with 5 moons )
and by the IAU definition


CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> be shown to have “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit, be gravitationally dominant in its area



Jupiter does not Qualify
Jupiter has not Cleared its orbit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan


Earth trojans (1)
Mars trojans (7)
Jupiter trojans (6000+)
Uranus trojans (1)
Neptune trojans (13)
Shows how STUPID the IAU definition of a Planet is


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 23, 2015)

Nasa's New Horizons Probe Reveals Last of Pluto's Moons






Interplanetary space probe New Horizons has sent the images of Pluto's moon Kerberos, which appears to be smaller than scientists expected and has a highly-reflective surface.

Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, around 12 km in its long dimension and 4.5 km in its shortest dimension, US space agency Nasa said in a statement.

"Once again, the Pluto system has surprised us," said New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

An image of Kerberos was created by combining four Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures taken on July 14. The new data was downlinked from the New Horizons spacecraft on October 20.



Scientists speculate from its unusual shape that Kerberos could have been formed by the merger of two smaller objects.

The reflectivity of Kerberos' surface is similar to that of Pluto's other small moons (approximately 50 percent) and strongly suggests Kerberos, like the others, is coated with relatively clean water ice.

Earlier, scientists theorised Kerberos was relatively large and massive, appearing faint only because its surface was covered in dark material.

But the small, bright-surfaced Kerberos now revealed in new images shows that the idea was incorrect, for reasons that are not yet understood.

"Our predictions were nearly spot-on for other small moons, but not for Kerberos," said New Horizons co-investigator Mark Showalter, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

The new results are expected to lead to a better understanding of Pluto's fascinating satellite system.






The images of Kerberos taken by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft complete the family portrait of Pluto's moons - Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra and Charon.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 24, 2015)

Kuiper Belt explorer will have next rendezvous in 2019

(New Horizons is approximately 74 million miles beyond Pluto and 3.16 billion miles from Earth.)


On Thursday the spacecraft's hydrazine-fueled thrusters




(not one but similar)

were fired for 16 minutes at 1050 PT (1850 UTC) in the first of four maneuvers that will aim the Earth-built lab at its next target. Its goal is 2014 MU69, a distant speck that's 6.4 billion kilometres from Earth, far out in the Kuiper Belt that encircles our solar system.






"Even as the New Horizon's spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer," said John Grunsfeld, chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

2014 MU69 was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of the Kuiper Belt for additional targets. Only Hubble could find the planetoid, which is between 30 and 45 km across, and it was picked because it's the most economical target that will preserve the maximum amount of thruster fuel.

Thursday's burn changed the probe's speed by about 10 meters per second, and by the time the fourth is finished the probe will be going an extra 57 meters per second in the right direction.

That's not much, considering the probe is travelling at 52,304 kilometers per hour, Even so, its next trip will take four years and the probe will flash past 2014 MU69 on New Year's Day 2019, about the time most of us are getting over our hangovers.

Scientists are still poring over the data being sent back after the probe's successful flyby of Pluto and more information is yet to come, since the spacecraft can only send back its files at around 1kb per second.

*Propulsion*
The propulsion system on New Horizons is used for course corrections and for pointing the spacecraft. It is not needed to speed the spacecraft to Pluto; that was done entirely by the launch vehicle, with a boost from Jupiter’s gravity.

The New Horizons propulsion system includes 16 small hydrazine-propellant thrusters mounted across the spacecraft in eight locations, a fuel tank, and associated distribution plumbing. Four thrusters that each provide 4.4 newtons of force (1 pound) are used mostly for course corrections. Operators also employ 12 smaller thrusters – providing 0.8 newtons (about 3 ounces) of thrust each – to point, spin up and spin down the spacecraft. Eight of the 16 thrusters aboard New Horizons are considered the primary set; the other eight comprise the backup (redundant) set.






(not it but similar)

At launch, the spacecraft carried 77 kilograms (170 pounds) of hydrazine, stored in a lightweight titanium tank. Helium gas pushes fuel through the system to the thrusters. Using a Jupiter gravity assist, along with the fact that New Horizons does not slow down or go into orbit around Pluto, reduced the amount of propellant needed for the mission.

*We're a step closer to powering rockets with bacteria*
*



*
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151021083529.htm


----------



## Drone (Oct 24, 2015)

Pluto in 3D






Seasonal comparison Earth vs Pluto









Axial tilt 119.5 woooooooooooooooow!


----------



## Drone (Oct 30, 2015)

craters on Charon











New full view of Pluto's crescent


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 30, 2015)

@Drone 

some people dont click on links and they miss the best bits of your posts, i'm not being critical mate, you know i love your stuff.................
I just wanted to highlight some relevant and interesting info.


NASA says the image was taken just 15 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto on July 14, earlier this year, "as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun."

It essentially completes the image that the space agency released back in September, showcasing what the Pluto looks like at sunset.

The image shows the layers of the dwarf planet's atmosphere, which "highlights more than a dozen high-altitude layers of haze in Pluto's tenuous atmosphere," according to NASA.

The icy Sputnik Planun plateau can be seen on the brighter, sunlit side of the planet in the image, while the image also profiles of some of the planet's rugged terrain, including mountains that rise up to 11,000 feet.

New Horizons took the image, which has a resolution of 700 meters, from a distance of 11,000 miles from Pluto.


----------



## Drone (Oct 30, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> some people dont click on links and they miss the best bits of your posts, i'm not being critical mate, you know i love your stuff.................
> I just wanted to highlight some relevant and interesting info.



I just thought that those who don't care won't read stuff even if it's right in front of their noses (I mean come on, I've made so many threads with zero responses) and those who care will click and read anyway.

Anyways thanks for highlights.








This image was taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the morning of July 13, 2015, from a range of 1.7 million km and has a resolution of 8.3 km per pixel. It provides fascinating new details to help the science team map the informally named Krun Macula (the prominent dark spot at the bottom of the image) and the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto's “heart” (Tombaugh Regio). Pluto's north pole is on the planet's disk at the 12 o'clock position of this image.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 30, 2015)

I read 'em all Pal.


----------



## dorsetknob (Oct 30, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> I read 'em all Pal.



As do i  and sometimes i also contribute where i can


----------



## Drone (Nov 10, 2015)

New Horizons Yields Wealth of Discovery

1) New Horizons geologists combined images of Pluto's surface to make 3D maps that indicate two of Pluto's most distinctive mountains (named *Wright Mons* and *Piccard Mons* measuring tens of miles across and several miles high) could be *cryovolcanoes*. While their appearance is similar to volcanoes on Earth that spew molten rock, ice volcanoes on Pluto are expected to emit a somewhat melted slurry of substances such as water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, or methane.






2) Pluto's surface varies in age - from ancient, to intermediate, to relatively young.






Locations of *> 1000 craters* mapped on Pluto.

3) The absence of small craters on Pluto and Charon implies that many Kuiper Belt objects could have been “born large”.

4) Most inner moons in the solar system keep one face pointed toward their central planet; this animation shows that certainly isn't the case with moons of Pluto (Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra), which behave like spinning tops.










5) Data from New Horizons indicates that at least two - and possibly all four - of Pluto's small moons may be the result of mergers between still smaller moons.


----------



## R-T-B (Nov 10, 2015)

dorsetknob said:


> its always been a planet (now with 5 moons )
> and by the IAU definition
> 
> 
> ...





> gravitationally *dominant*



I take this to mean it's the "big fish" in the sea of it's orbit.  Trojans don't count because they aren't dominant and merely tag along for the ride.  Pluto is not gravitationally dominant in it's orbit, Neptune traverses it's orbit, and is far more influential gravitationally.


----------



## RCoon (Nov 10, 2015)

Drone said:


> those who care will click and read anyway



I click and read all your threads. UK news doesn't cover much about space, and I imagine a lot of country's general news channels don't either. I personally find it fascinating, and pop on here to learn cool stuff.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Nov 10, 2015)

Scientists have also learned that Pluto’s surface developed in at least three stages, varying in age from ancient and intermediate, to relatively young. Pluto’s surface shows that it could be over 4 billion years old. NASA researchers determined this by counting crater impacts: The more crater impacts, the older a region is likely to be.







Icy Volcanoes May Erupt on Pluto




A possible ice volcano on Pluto (visible at center) is seen in this NASA image, captured by the New Horizons spacecraft, released on Nov. 9, 2015. The feature, called Wright Mons, is a strange feature 100 miles wide and 13,000 feet high with a summit depression at its center. New Horizons scientists suspect Wright Mons and another mountain may be signs of cryovolcanic eruptions on Pluto.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute





The locations of two mountains on Pluto that may actually be icy volcanoes are shown in this montage of images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured during its July 2015 flyby. The new images were unveiled Nov. 9.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute


----------



## Drone (Nov 12, 2015)

New Horizons scientists made this false color image of Pluto using a technique called *principal component analysis* to highlight the many subtle color differences between Pluto's distinct regions.


----------



## Drone (Nov 21, 2015)

Pluto’s day is 6.4 Earth days long. The images were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera as the distance between New Horizons and Pluto decreased from 8 million km on July 7 to ~ 645000 km on July 13. The more distant images contribute to the view at the 3 o’clock position, with the top of the heart-shaped, informally named Tombaugh Regio slipping out of view, giving way to the side of Pluto that was facing away from New Horizons during closest approach on July 14.  The side New Horizons saw in most detail – what the mission team calls the “encounter hemisphere” – is at the 6 o’clock position.






Charon – like Pluto – rotates once every 6.4 Earth days. The photos were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera from July 7-13, as New Horizons closed in over a range of 10.2 million km. The more distant images contribute to the view at the 9 o’clock position, with few of the signature surface features visible, such as the cratered uplands, canyons, or rolling plains of the informally named Vulcan Planum. The side New Horizons saw in most detail, during closest approach on July 14, 2015, is at the 12 o’clock position.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Nov 21, 2015)

Dear Pluto




Thankyou for my new desktop background




Love

CAPS


----------



## Drone (Nov 21, 2015)

_Today’s post is from Veronica Bray, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. She specializes in comparing the surfaces of planetary bodies across the solar system._

I love looking at New Horizons’ images of Pluto! But I spend most of my time looking elsewhere. Why? Because comparing Pluto with other planetary bodies helps me to understand what processes could be operating on Pluto’s surface and beneath its icy crust. Although a full understanding of planetary processes is a more complicated matter, the initial steps that I take as a comparative planetologist are simple: compare what the features look like on the different bodies.

Pluto’s surface is comprised of water ice and other exotic types of ice (e.g. methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen). This makes comparison to the icy moons of the outer solar system a logical place for me to look for analogous landforms. However, as the close-up images of Pluto came back from New Horizons, I was reminded of places closer to home. This blog post presents two examples of features on Pluto that remind me of landforms on Earth and Mars.

Polygons: Polygons on a planetary surface typically have five or more sides and can form in several different ways. When the New Horizons team first saw the polygons of the icy plain on Pluto that we informally call Sputnik Planum (Figure 1B), a number of questions arose: Were these patterns due to the heating up and cooling of the surface, leading to expansion and contraction cracking like the polygons seen on Mars (Figure 1A)? Was sub-surface convection of warmer ices creating a cracked surface above the convection ‘cells’ as can be seen in the surface ice of frozen lakes on Earth (Figure 1C)? Or were they similar to ‘dessication’ mud cracks (Figure 1D) formed by the drying out of the surface material? We each had our own theory and the team buzzed with discussion about what might be going on. We showed one another pictures taken by spacecraft in other places it the solar system; we even shared photos that we ourselves had taken from business trips and fieldwork! All so that we could take the next step in understanding these features: to compare the morphology.

The polygons on Pluto’s Sputnik Planum have edges that are smoother and more curved than the linear sides of the mud cracks or Martian freeze-thaw polygons. Instead, the polygons of Sputnik Planum most closely resemble those formed by sub-surface convection (although on a MUCH larger scale than the example used in Figure 1C.) Our current understanding of the polygons of Sputnik Planum is that they mark the top of convection cells within a slowly churning mass of nitrogen and carbon monoxide ices. So, although I was initially reminded of processes on the Earth and Mars, this process on Pluto is far more exotic and has never been seen anywhere else in the solar system!






Figure 1: Examples of polygons on the Earth, Mars and Pluto. A) Freeze-thaw polygons in the periglacial terrain of Mars. In this image from NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, frost is highlighting the cracks at the edges of each polygon. Looking closely we can see smaller polygons within the larger polygons. The image is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. Credit: NASA B) New Horizons’ image of a ~ 120 mile (200 kilometer) wide section of ‘Sputnik Planum’ on Pluto. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI C) Fracture polygons on a frozen lake on Earth. The image is approximately 13 feet (4 meters) across. Credit: Paul Schenk D) Mud crack polygons on Earth. This image shows large polygons (~ 33 feet or 10 meters across), and the smaller mud cracks within them, created as a muddy surface dries out. See it for yourself at Red Lake Playa in Death Valley. _Credit: Jason Barnes_

*Impact Craters:*

I can usually count on impact craters to be present to assist me with comparing planetary surfaces. All but a few surfaces in the solar system are scarred by hypervelocity impacts that penetrate down into the crust. I compare the shapes of impact craters on Pluto and other bodies to investigate the crustal and sub-surface properties.

Figure 2 shows examples of ‘central pit’ craters – large complex craters with a pit at or near their center. The diameter of the pit compared to the diameter of the crater for the Pluto example (Figure 2B) is similar to the Martian example (Figure 2A), which might suggest a similar formation mechanism. Although various types of pits or pitted-peaks can be found in craters across the solar system, this type of central pit crater has a particularly large pit relative to the crater size and is only found on ice-rich bodies. Their formation has consequently been linked to the presence of water ice in the crust. It is not surprising then that we found this central pit on Pluto in the informally-named Cthulu Regio, in an area of noted water-ice content. But of course, the story is never that simple. The presence of sub-surface layering has also been suggested as a reason for the formation of central pits.

I am currently measuring and comparing the central pit craters across the solar system to determine why and how central pits form, and consequently, whether their presence on a planetary surface can be used as a prospecting tool for water ice or target layering. The new observation of a central pit crater on Pluto from New Horizons provides another important data point to add to my quest to understand how these craters form.






Figure 2: Examples of central floor pit craters on A) Mars and B) Pluto. Scale bars are approximately 20 km across. The Mars image is from ESA’s High Resolution Stereo Camera and features a crater in the Thaumasia Planum region. Credit: ESA. The Pluto example shows an as yet unnamed crater in the dark terrain of Cthulu Regio. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 4, 2015)

Nasa's New Horizon's probe may have passed Pluto, but it is still surprising scientists.

It recently took the closest images ever of a distant Kuiper Belt object, capturing a mysterious object passing 3.3 billion miles from the sun.

Scientists say the object, named 1994 JR1, is a 90-mile (150-kilometer)-wide ancient body.







Nasa says the video demonstrates its ability to observe numerous such bodies over the next several years if NASA approves an extended mission into the Kuiper Belt.

When these images were made, 1994 JR1 was 3.3 billion miles (5.3 billion miles) from the sun, but only 170 million miles (280 million kilometers) away from New Horizons.

This sets a record, by a factor of at least 15, for the closest-ever picture of a small body in the Kuiper Belt, the solar system's 'third zone' beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer, icy gas giants.

Mission scientists plan to use images like these to study many more ancient Kuiper Belt objects from New Horizons if an extended mission is approved.

*WHAT IS THE KUIPER BELT? *
The Kuiper Belt is a freezing ring of debris orbiting more than 4 billion miles from the sun.

It is thought to be the remains of the violent and chaotic collisions that led to the formation of the planets.

There are an estimated 33,000 objects more than 60 metres across in the belt and three dwarf planets.

Astronomer Mike Brown, from Caltech in Pasadena California, has likened the Kuiper belt to the 'blood splatter' left behind by the formation of the solar system.

Although now relatively calm and stable, it is likely to be a dangerous place for New Horizons as it may be filled with unseen debris and space rocks.


----------



## Ahhzz (Dec 4, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Nasa's New Horizon's probe may have passed Pluto, but it is still surprising scientists.
> 
> It recently took the closest images ever of a distant Kuiper Belt object, capturing a mysterious object passing 3.3 billion miles from the sun.
> 
> ...


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 5, 2015)

The sharpest ever images of Pluto have just been sent back by New Horizons, and they could be the best close-ups of the dwarf Planet that humans will see for decades.

From its rugged 'badlands' to its mountainous shorelines, the latest pictures are part of a sequence taken 15 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach on July 14.

The resolution is stunning. At around 80 metres per pixel, incredible details can be picked out, such as huge ice blocks, dramatic craters and crumpled ridges - all less than half the size of a city block on Pluto's diverse surface.







Pictured here is the mountainous shoreline of Sputnik Planum. In this highest-resolution image from New Horizons, great blocks of Pluto's water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. 'The mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution,' said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute






These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto showing a wide variety of cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains. Combined, the pictures form a strip (shown in grey) that shows cratered plains to the jagged water ice mountains that ring a vast expanse of nitrogen ice called Sputnik Planum





This image reveals new details of Pluto’s rugged, icy cratered plains, including layering in the interior walls of many craters. "Impact craters are nature's drill rigs, and the new, highest-resolution pictures of the bigger craters seem to show that Pluto's icy crust, at least in places, is distinctly layered,” said William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team

'These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto's geology,' said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.

'Nothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we're there already – down among the craters, mountains and ice fields – less than five months after flyby. The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable.'

The images were captured with the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, about 15 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto – from a range of just 10,000 miles (17,000 km).

They were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual 'point and shoot,' LORRI snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface.

This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images.

These new images are six times better than the resolution of the global Pluto map New Horizons obtained, and five times better than the best images of Pluto's cousin Triton, Neptune's large moon, obtained by Voyager 2 in 1989.

Mission scientists expect more imagery from this set over the next several days, showing even more terrain at this highest resolution.

It follows an image released by Nasa last month showing 10 close-ups of the frosty, faraway world today, representing one Pluto day, which is equivalent to 6.4 Earth days.






Nasa's latest Pluto pictures depict an entire day on the dwarf planet. The space agency released a series of 10 close-ups of the frosty, faraway world today, representing one Pluto day, which is equivalent to 6.4 Earth days. The New Horizons spacecraft took the pictures as it zoomed past Pluto in an unprecedented flyby in July. Pluto was between 400,000 and 5 million miles from the camera for these photos

@dorsetknob


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 19, 2015)

I am saying nothing..............






The top of the image shows simple cratered plains, unchanged by time, but the picture quickly grows more complex. Further down, the image reveals jagged faults, suggesting large-scale processes at work within the dwarf planet. Then, the photo reaches the dark (informally named) Cthulhu Regio and its strange overlap with the bright, active ices at the edge of the flat Sputnik Planum. Finally, the strange, 2.5-mile-high (4 kilometers) potential ice volcano Wright Mons appears with an oblong shadow just before the darkness, while the rest of the world is in the shadow of night.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 4, 2016)

New Horizons' infrared filter is casting the dwarf planet in a new light






NASA has posted both a photo and a video showing how the spacecraft can produce vibrant colours from the seemingly drab-looking dwarf planet. The key is New Horizons' infrared spectrometer. Its linearly-varying filter produces a stained glass window effect as it looks for reflected chemicals, like in the clip you see below -- the dark bands come when Pluto's methane ice absorbs those materials. 

Infrared scans were crucial to confirming the presence of water ice on Pluto, and further research using this data should help understand how both Pluto and its main moon Charon have evolved over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iixo6Ongj8c


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 8, 2016)

New Horizons has sent back one of its most intriguing images of the surface of Pluto.

It shows a mysterious object appearing to 'slide' through the surface.

Nasa experts believe the object may be a  'dirty block of water ice'.







They say it is 'floating' in denser solid nitrogen, and which has been dragged to the edge of a convection cell.

Also visible are thousands of pits in the surface, which scientists believe may form by sublimation.

Transmitted to Earth on Dec. 24, this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) extends New Horizons' highest-resolution views of Pluto to the very center of Sputnik Planum, the informally named icy plain that forms the left side of Pluto's 'heart' feature.

Sputnik Planum is at a lower elevation than most of the surrounding area by a couple of miles, but is not completely flat.

Its surface is separated into cells or polygons 10 to 25 miles (16 to 40 kilometers) wide, and when viewed at low sun angles (with visible shadows), the cells are seen to have slightly raised centers and ridged margins, with about 100 yards (100 meters) of overall height variation.

Mission scientists believe the pattern of the cells stems from the slow thermal convection of the nitrogen-dominated ices that fill Sputnik Planum.

A reservoir that's likely several miles or kilometers deep in some places, the solid nitrogen is warmed at depth by Pluto's modest internal heat, becomes buoyant and rises up in great blobs, and then cools off and sinks again to renew the cycle.

'This part of Pluto is acting like a lava lamp,' said William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team, from Washington University in St. Louis, 'if you can imagine a lava lamp as wide as, and even deeper than, the Hudson Bay.'

Computer models by the New Horizons team show that these blobs of overturning solid nitrogen can slowly evolve and merge over millions of years. The ridged margins, which mark where cooled nitrogen ice sinks back down, can be pinched off and abandoned.

The 'X' feature is likely one of these—a former quadruple junction where four convection cells meet. Numerous, active triple junctions can be seen elsewhere in the LORRI mosaic.





On July 14 the telescopic camera on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft took the highest resolution images ever obtained of the intricate pattern of 'pits' across a section of Pluto's prominent heart-shaped region, informally named Tombaugh Regio. The image is part of a sequence taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft passed within 9,550 miles (15,400 kilometers) of Pluto's surface, just 13 minutes before the time of closest approach.






Pictured here is the mountainous shoreline of Sputnik Planum. In this highest-resolution image from New Horizons, great blocks of Pluto's water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. 'The mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution,' said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute






This image reveals new details of Pluto's rugged, icy cratered plains, including layering in the interior walls of many craters. 'Impact craters are nature's drill rigs, and the new, highest-resolution pictures of the bigger craters seem to show that Pluto's icy crust, at least in places, is distinctly layered,' said William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team






Pictured are Pluto's 'Badlands'. This highest-resolution image from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft shows how erosion and faulting have sculpted this portion of Pluto's icy crust into rugged badlands topography


http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Images/index.php


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 13, 2016)

Scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission have combined data from two instruments to create this composite image of Pluto’s informally named Viking Terra area.







The combination includes pictures taken by the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 31,000 miles (49,000 kilometers), showing features as small as 1,600 feet (480 meters) across. Draped over the LORRI mosaic is enhanced color data from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) gathered about 20 minutes after the LORRI snapshots were taken, from a range of 21,000 miles (34,000 kilometers) and at a resolution of about 2,100 feet (650 meters) per pixel. The entire scene is 160 miles (250 kilometers) across.
Among the features scientists find particularly interesting are the bright methane ices that condensed on many crater rims; the collection of dark red tholins (small soot-like particles generated from reactions involving methane and nitrogen in the atmosphere) in low areas, like the bottoms of craters; and the layering on the faces of steep cliffs and on crater walls.
In areas where the reddish material is thickest and the surface appears smooth, the material seems to have flowed into some channels and craters. Scientists say tholin deposits of that thickness aren’t usually mobile on large scales, suggesting that they might be riding along with ice flowing underneath, or being blown around by Pluto’s winds.







http://www.space.com/topics/pluto-the-ninth-planet-that-was-a-dwarf/


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 15, 2016)

The most detailed image yet of a giant mountain on Pluto, which is suspected to be an ice volcano, has been released by Nasa. 
It is one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015.
At about 90 miles (150km) across and 2.5 miles (4km) high, this feature is enormous. 
The feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers.








Mission scientists are baffled by the sparse distribution of red material in the image and wonder why it is not more widespread
Also perplexing is that there is only one identified impact crater on Wright Mons itself, telling scientists that the surface - as well as some of the crust underneath - was created relatively recently. 
This is turn may indicate that Wright Mons was volcanically active late in Pluto's history. 
The other potential ice volcano on Pluto has been named Piccard Mons, is up to 3.5 miles (6 km) high. Both ice volcanoes are located near Pluto's South Pole













'We're not yet ready to announce we have found volcanic constructs at Pluto, but these sure look suspicious and we're looking at them very closely,' said Jeff Moore, a planetary scientist at Nasa said in an earlier release.
Nasa says that if Pluto does have cryovolcanoes, it may be an indication that there is volatile ice that coats its surface.
These volatile ices may be driven by an internal heat source. According to a report in *Nature*, the most likely the radioactive decay of elements left over from Pluto's birth, 4.5 billion years ago.
'These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing - a volcano,' said Oliver White, New Horizons researcher.
'If they are volcanic, then the summit depression would likely have formed via collapse as material is erupted from underneath.
'The strange hummocky texture of the mountain flanks may represent volcanic flows of some sort that have travelled down from the summit region and onto the plains beyond, but why they are hummocky, and what they are made of, we don't yet know.'



Ice volcanoes on Pluto are expected to emit a somewhat melted slurry of substances such as water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, or methane.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 19, 2016)

NASA has released an incredible image of the haze layers in Pluto’s atmosphere taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.






The processed image is the highest-resolution color look yet at the haze layers, according to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which engineered New Horizons with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The image, which was acquired on July 14, 2015, was taken by the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), “splashed” with Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) four-color filter data.
*Related: *NASA’s Pluto mission in pictures

The image resolution is 0.6 miles per pixel, with the sun illuminating the scene from the right.
“Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene,” explained the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in a statement. “These hydrocarbons accumulate into small particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, and scatter sunlight to make the bright blue haze seen in this image.”
*Related: *Cool NASA images reveal day in the life of Pluto


----------



## Beertintedgoggles (Jan 19, 2016)

I realize that given the timescale it shouldn't surprise me but it still seems surprising / perplexing that there are that many objects (meteors and maybe asteroids kicked out by Jupiter) that impact Pluto.  Given the enormity of its orbit (compared to the inner planets), I can only imagine the chances of an object falling into Pluto's gravity well is miniscule.

Edit:  This thread and the discoveries it highlights make me glad to be alive at this point in history.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 19, 2016)

Beertintedgoggles said:


> I realize that given the timescale it shouldn't surprise me but it still seems surprising / perplexing that there are that many objects (meteors and maybe asteroids kicked out by Jupiter) that impact Pluto.  Given the enormity of its orbit (compared to the inner planets), I can only imagine the chances of an object falling into Pluto's gravity well is miniscule.



NASA actually expected more if i recall, being it's in a known crowded region (the Kuiper belt).


----------



## Beertintedgoggles (Jan 19, 2016)

Good point but isn't it like comparing the population densities of two places... Country A (Pluto's orbit) being 12 times larger than Country B (any of the inner planets orbits).  Even if Country A has 5 times the population of Country B you're still more likely to run into someone in B.  (Currently working abroad so that's about the only analogy I could come up with).

And to think that not too long ago we really didn't think there was too much past Pluto.  The Oort cloud was some icy unknown that would kick a comet our way once in a while.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 19, 2016)

Beertintedgoggles said:


> Good point but isn't it like comparing the population densities of two places... Country A (Pluto's orbit) being 12 times larger than Country B (any of the inner planets orbits).  Even if Country A has 5 times the population of Country B you're still more likely to run into someone in B.  (Currently working abroad so that's about the only analogy I could come up with).



While this is true, my understanding is that the relative density out there is surprisingly high compared to the number of impact craters.  Enough for NASA to ask "why aren't there more craters?" in one of their posts.


----------



## Beertintedgoggles (Jan 19, 2016)

Does anyone else get a stupid smile on their face while sifting through all the pictures and data about Pluto?  As quoted from Futurama, "All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer!"


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 19, 2016)

I think the surface evolves and "lives" and as a consequence the frequent craters are obscured, unlike on our Moon.

@Beertintedgoggles  you summed up my grin perfectly, myself and many other members have looked forward for years to actually seeing these results.

NASA should be recognised for providing the pics and info so promptly for us all to enjoy.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 24, 2016)

*Pluto's Ice Only 10 Million Years Old*







Pictures are still filtering back from NASA’s New Horizons close-up of Pluto last year and one of the biggest surprises so far comes from the region informally known as Sputnik Planum. There’s a lack of craters on its surface, making it a unique area on Pluto and a rare spot in the solar system — it turns out it could be very young terrain indeed.

What I did was take the pictures that we have seen — the amazing pictures! — and calculate, based on Pluto’s orbital environment, what the impact rate and therefore the surface age of Sputnik Planum must be,” wrote planetary scientist David Trilling in an email to Discovery News.
“There have been lots of press releases describing various aspects of Sputnik Planum, but, as far as I know, this is the first time that the age estimate of 10 million years or younger appears in the peer-reviewed literature,” added Trilling, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northern Arizona University.


Trilling’s study, which is in press at PLOS One, mentions three ways the resurfacing could take place:

Nitrogen ice on the surface could be “relaxing” if it is viscous, getting rid of any craters created by meteroids.
Ice on the bottom could be rising up and replacing ice at the top, somewhat like how a lava lamp works.
The ice could be partially melted at its bottom and from time to time, erupt on to the surface as cryo-lava.
As for where the meteorites are coming from, Trilling points out that Pluto is in a zone filled with smaller Kuiper Belt objects. From time to time, these small bodies crash into Pluto. Trilling’s math shows that this happens roughly every 10 million years, which would explain why Sputnik Planum appears so young.




USPS new  postage stamp.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 26, 2016)

Water Ice on Pluto






Regions with exposed water ice are highlighted in blue in this composite image from New Horizons' Ralph instrument, combining visible imagery from the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) with infrared spectroscopy from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). The strongest signatures of water ice occur along Virgil Fossa, just west of Elliot crater on the left side of the inset image, and also in Viking Terra near the top of the frame. A major outcrop also occurs in Baré Montes towards the right of the image, along with numerous much smaller outcrops, mostly associated with impact craters and valleys between mountains. The scene is approximately 280 miles (450 kilometers) across. Note that all surface feature names are informal.
_Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI_


----------



## Drone (Jan 29, 2016)

Only an imager on the far side of Pluto could catch such a view, with a bright, thin sliver of Charon near the lower left illuminated by the sun.  Night has fallen over the rest of this side of Charon, yet despite the lack of sunlight over most of the surface, Charon's nighttime landscapes are still faintly visible by light softly reflected off Pluto, just as “Earthshine” lights up a new moon each month.






This image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is the first look at Pluto's atmosphere in infrared wavelengths






New data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft point to more prevalent water ice on Pluto's surface than previously thought.


----------



## Drone (Feb 1, 2016)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 4, 2016)

Hills of water ice could be ‘floating’ in a sea of frozen nitrogen on Pluto, moving over time like icebergs in Earth’s Arctic Ocean
These hills, which can be seen in the latest images studied by the New Horizons team, are believed to measure one to several miles across. 
They are found in the vast ice plain informally named Sputnik Planum within Pluto’s ‘heart' and are likely miniature versions of the larger, jumbled mountains on the region’s western border.
Their discovery follows news last week that Pluto may be covered in a lot more water ice than astronomers previously thought, which could boost the chances for finding a liquid sea and alien life





 This shows the inset in context next to a larger view. The resolution is about 1050ft (320 meters) per pixel and 300 miles (almost 500km) long and 210 miles (340km) wide. It was taken 9,950 miles (16,000km) from Pluto, 12 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14



Nasa describes the feature as ‘yet another example of Pluto’s fascinating and abundant geological activity.’
Because water ice is less dense than nitrogen-dominated ice, scientists believe these water ice hills are floating in a sea of frozen nitrogen and move over time like icebergs on Earth.
The hills may be fragments of the rugged uplands that have broken away and are being carried by the nitrogen glaciers into Sputnik Planum.


‘Chains’ of the drifting hills are formed along the flow paths of the glaciers.
When the hills enter the cellular terrain of central Sputnik Planum, they become subject to the motions of the nitrogen ice, and are pushed to the edges of the cells, where the hills cluster in groups reaching up to 12 miles (20km) across.
At the northern end of the image, the feature informally named Challenger Colles – honouring the crew of the lost space shuttle Challenger – appears to be an especially large accumulation of these hills, measuring 37 by 22 miles (60 by 35km).
This feature is located near the boundary with the uplands, away from the cellular terrain, and may represent a location where hills have been ‘beached’ due to the nitrogen ice being especially shallow.


----------



## Drone (Feb 5, 2016)

"Slightly" bigger inset image of Floating Hills posted above and big ass image of Sputnik Planum


----------



## Drone (Feb 12, 2016)

Putting Pluto’s Geology on the Map


----------



## Drone (Feb 14, 2016)

From left to right, the central sub-observer longitudes are ~180, 240, 360 and 60 degrees East Longitude. The Pluto “Encounter Hemisphere” (indicated by the white box) is most recognizable by the “heart” feature of the informally-named Tombaugh Regio. This is also the hemisphere that never faces Charon, as Charon is “tidally locked” to Pluto. Pluto's “Charon-facing” side is the second column from the right. Pluto's north pole is up in all these images. New Horizons was only millions of miles from Pluto.



Six faces of Charon. The side that faces Pluto is highlighted by the inset box. Charon remains a mainly neutral greyish color all around, with a distinct red northern polar cap appearing from all sides.


----------



## Drone (Feb 16, 2016)

New Horizons team processed raw data and uploaded videos:










That was NIX










Cool Pluto 4K video. I like how they removed artifacts, added contrast and made a great combined image showing Pluto and its tenuous atmosphere. Really sexy video. It's a little different than the real trajectory of New Horizons.










Charon looks really great in this video, much better than it looked in images. Now it's so sharp, with enhanced colors and it's so 3D!










Tombaugh Regio


----------



## Drone (Feb 16, 2016)

Part 2:


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 19, 2016)

Images from the New Horizons mission suggest that Pluto's moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that may have hosted life.
It has long since frozen and expanded, pushing it outward and causing the moon's surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale.
















A close-up of the canyons on Charon, Pluto's big moon, taken by New Horizons during its close approach to the Pluto system last July. Multiple views taken by New Horizons as it passed by Charon allow stereo measurements of topography, shown in the color-coded version of the image. The scale bar indicates relative elevation





The side of Pluto's largest moon viewed by Nasa's passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterised by a system of 'pull apart' tectonic faults.
This is seen as ridges, scarps and valleys - the latter sometimes reaching more than 4 miles (6.5km) deep.
Charon's tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and became fractured as it stretched.
The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice.
This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charon's own internal heat of formation.
Scientists say Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface oceanoa


But as Charon cooled over time, this ocean would have frozen and expanded - as happens when water freezes - lifting the outermost layers of the moon and producing the massive chasms we see today.
The latest image from New Horizons shows part of the feature informally named Serenity Chasma, part of a vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon.
This system of chasms is one of the longest seen anywhere in the solar system, running at least 1,100 miles (about 1,800km) long and reaching 4.5 miles (7.5km) deep.
By comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446km) long and just over a mile (1.6km) deep.
The lower portion of the image shows colour-coded topography of the same scene.

Measurements of the shape of this feature tells scientists that Charon's water ice layer may have been at least partially liquid in its early history, and has since refrozen.
At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. 
New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they're finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more. 
'We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,' said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute.
'But I couldn't be more delighted with what we see


----------



## Drone (Feb 19, 2016)

Video by GeoBeats News which basically covers the post above:










New image of .. hell if I know






These images were taken to search for any evidence of dust rings in the Pluto system. Small particles are strongly forward scattering, so observations after closest approach might be able to see rings even though they weren’t detected during the approach to Pluto. One problem, however, is that scattered sunlight produces a high background level that reduces our ability to see dust rings. This situation is similar to what happens when you’re driving your car and the Sun is directly in front of you. The dirt on your windshield is now easy to see, but you’re also fighting the glare from the Sun.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 26, 2016)

Nasa has revealed these incredible images of Pluto's northernmost region, revealing the incredible diversity of its frozen terrain - and its strange yellow hue.
They show vast canyons up to 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide, and giant pits that are 45 miles (70 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep.





The enhanced colour image of the north polar area shows long canyons run vertically across the polar area—part of the informally named Lowell Regio, named for Percival Lowell, who founded Lowell Observatory and initiated the search that led to Pluto's discovery. 
The widest of the canyons (yellow in the image below) – is about 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide and runs close to the north pole. 
Roughly parallel subsidiary canyons to the east and west (in green) are approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. 
The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material. 
These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics.
A shallow, winding valley (in blue) runs the entire length of the canyon floor. To the east of these canyons, another valley (pink) winds toward the bottom-right corner of the image. 
The nearby terrain, at bottom right, appears to have been blanketed by material that obscures small-scale topographic features, creating a 'softened' appearance for the landscape.
Large, irregularly-shaped pits (in red), reach 45 miles (70 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep, scarring the region. 
These pits may indicate locations where subsurface ice has melted or sublimated from below, causing the ground to collapse.
The color and composition of this region – shown in enhanced color – also are unusual. 
High elevations show up in a distinctive yellow, not seen elsewhere on Pluto. 
The yellowish terrain fades to a uniform bluish gray at lower elevations and latitudes. 
New Horizons' infrared measurements show methane ice is abundant across Lowell Regio, and there is relatively little nitrogen ice. 
'One possibility is that the yellow terrains may correspond to older methane deposits that have been more processed by solar radiation than the bluer terrain,' said Will Grundy, New Horizons composition team lead from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.
The image was obtained by New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC)


----------



## Drone (Feb 27, 2016)

New high-quality image


Due to very low downlink rates with a spacecraft that is 3 billion miles away (and counting), it will take more than a year to get every bit down from the Pluto encounter sequence. Today – about 7 months after the encounter – more than half of the data is still on the spacecraft! Because of the long duration downlink period, it is important that this work is done as efficiently as possible.

To facilitate the playback of New Horizons' encounter data, there's a piece of software, called *DataTrack*. DataTrack consists of a web-based user interface, with a MySQL database backend. It helps keep track of all data sets from the encounter load, and at what stage they are in the downlink process. It also helps track the processes of mathematical data compression on New Horizons.






New Horizons DataTrack UI


----------



## Drone (Feb 27, 2016)

New processed videos: rotations of Nix and Charon


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 3, 2016)

Nasa's New Horizons team have discovered a chain of exotic snowcapped mountains stretching across the dark expanse on Pluto informally named Cthulhu region. 
The area stretches nearly halfway around Pluto's equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum.







The reddish enhanced colour image shown as the left inset reveals a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that’s 260 miles (420km) long. The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red color of the surrounding plains. The right inset also shows how the bright ice on the mountains matches up with the distribution of methane (purple)


Measuring around 1,850 miles (3,000km) long and 450 miles (750km) wide, Cthulhu (pronounced kuh-THU-lu) is a bit larger than the state of Alaska. 
Cthulhu's appearance is characterised by a dark surface, which scientists think is due to being covered by a layer of dark tholins.
Tholins are complex molecules that form when methane is exposed to sunlight.

Cthulhu's geology exhibits a wide variety of landscapes - from mountainous to smooth, and to heavily cratered and fractured.
The reddish enhanced colour image reveals a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that's 260 miles (420km) long.
The range is situated among craters, with narrow valleys separating its peaks.
The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red colour of the surrounding plains.


----------



## Drone (Mar 4, 2016)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 7, 2016)

Clouds on Pluto

In an e-mail exchange with _New Scientist_, *Lowell Observatory* astronomer *Will Grundy* discusses the possibility that streaks and small condensations within the hazes might be individual clouds. Grundy also tracked a feature as it passed over different parts of the Plutonian landscape below, strongly suggesting a cloud.  If confirmed, they’d be the first-ever clouds seen on the dwarf planet, and a sign this small 1,473-mile-wide (2,370 km) orb possesses an even more complex atmosphere than imagined.





Recent images sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show possible clouds floating over the frozen landscape including the hazy streak right of center. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

​




Faint arrows along Pluto’s limb point to possible clouds in a low altitude haze layer. More distinct possible clouds are arrowed at left. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

​




15 minutes after its closest approach, New Horizons snapped this image of the smooth expanse of Sputnik Planum (right) flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI​


----------



## Drone (Mar 7, 2016)

new images and comments from their blog:






If you look to the _upper left of Pluto's 'heart'_, informally-named Sputnik Planum, you will see some chaotic terrain that is very different than the almost smooth terrain of the icy plains. These are the *Al-Idrisi Montes*, and they are filled with _blocks measuring miles to tens of miles across_.










The blocks within even a very small region can be very different. Some are really distinct and appear to be taller – without any other blocks touching them – while others get a bit more complicated.


----------



## Drone (Mar 9, 2016)

before: best pre-flyby maps of Pluto, made from images from the Hubble Space Telescope






after: Map of Pluto from New Horizons






A nearly top-down view of Pluto's icy plains, showing dark lanes reminiscent of glacial moraines.
















Methane snow-capped mountains in Cthulhu Regio


----------



## Drone (Mar 11, 2016)

Far in the western hemisphere, scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission have discovered what looks like a giant “*bite mark*” on Pluto's surface. They suspect it may be caused by a process known as *sublimation*. The methane ice-rich surface on Pluto may be sublimating away into the atmosphere, exposing a layer of water-ice underneath.






In this image, north is up. The southern portion of the left inset above shows the cratered plateau uplands informally named Vega Terra (note that all feature names are informal). A jagged scarp, or wall of cliffs, known as Piri Rupes borders the young, nearly crater-free plains of Piri Planitia. The cliffs break up into isolated mesas in several places.

Cutting diagonally across the mottled plains is the long extensional fault of Inanna Fossa, which stretches eastward 370 miles (600 kilometers) from here to the western edge of the great nitrogen ice plains of Sputnik Planum.

Compositional data from the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shown in the right inset, indicate that the plateau uplands south of Piri Rupes are rich in methane ice (shown in false color as purple).  Scientists speculate that sublimation of methane may be causing the plateau material to erode along the face of the cliffs, causing them to retreat south and leave the plains of Piri Planitia in their wake.

Compositional data also show that the surface of Piri Planitia is more enriched in water ice (shown in false color as blue) than the higher plateaus, which may indicate that Piri Planitia’s surface is made of water ice bedrock, just beneath a layer of retreating methane ice.  Because the surface of Pluto is so cold, the water ice is rock-like and immobile. The light/dark mottled pattern of Piri Planitia in the left inset is reflected in the composition map, with the lighter areas corresponding to areas richer in methane – these may be remnants of methane that have not yet sublimated away entirely.


----------



## Drone (Mar 12, 2016)

The image above is what geologists call '_bladed_' terrain in a region known as Tartarus Dorsa, located in the rough highlands on the eastern side of Tombaugh Regio. Surface features appear to be texturally '_snakeskin_'-like, owing to their north-south oriented scaly raised relief. These bladed structures have typical relief of ~ 500 m. Their relative spacing of ~ 3-5 km makes them some of the _steepest features_ seen on Pluto.


----------



## Drone (Mar 17, 2016)

New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer's Pluto system flyby. These five detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto – revealing the former 'astronomer's planet' to be a real world with diverse and active geology, exotic surface chemistry, a complex atmosphere, puzzling interaction with the Sun and an intriguing system of small moons.











Sputnik Planum on Pluto (top) and Vulcan Planum on Charon (bottom). The Vulcan Planum view in the bottom panel includes the “moated mountain” Clarke Mons just above the center of the image. The water ice-rich plains display a range of surface textures, from smooth and grooved at left, to pitted and hummocky at right.
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Click here for a full article


----------



## Niteblooded (Mar 18, 2016)

Now that we have all these pictures and data I really want to see an all out game set on Pluto.   Maybe something Metroid-esque so I can explore both the surface and under the surface in large detailed caverns.   If any game designers are reading this, make it happen! 

So many games set on made up worlds when we have interesting planets in our very own solar system.

On a related note, I'm looking forward to the Juno mission.   I been fascinated with Jupiter ever since I was a little kid.  Not going to get any pictures that can pierce that atmosphere but the data should be really cool.   Maybe the close up pics will give us some really nice texture shots of its atmosphere.


----------



## Drone (Mar 22, 2016)

CU-Boulder student-built dust counter got few “hits” on Pluto flyby​
Data downloaded and analyzed by the New Horizons team indicated the *space environment around Pluto and its moons contained only about 6 dust particles per cubic mile*.

The bottom line is that _space is mostly empty_. Any debris created when Pluto's moons were captured or created during impacts has long since been removed by planetary processes.

Studying the microscopic dust grains can give researchers clues about how the solar system was formed billions of years ago and how it works today, providing information on planets, moons and comets.




The CU-Boulder dust counter is a thin film resting on a honeycombed aluminum structure the size of a cake pan mounted on the spacecraft's exterior.  A small electronic box functions as the instrument's “brain” to assess each individual dust particle that strikes the detector, allowing the students to infer the mass of each particle.

Peering into Pluto's Past​






Cathy Olkin, deputy project scientist from SwRI, describing how New Horizons measured the radar reflectivity of Pluto and shattered the record for most-distant object ever explored by radar. “It's a record that should stand for decades or longer – unless, of course, we use that technique again when New Horizons encounters another Kuiper Belt object,” Olkin says. 

Richard Binzel, co-investigator from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, reporting on a new understanding of Pluto's long-term climate variations that include the finding that Pluto has both “tropics” and arctic regions. “*Right now, Pluto is between two extreme climate states. We are just beginning to understand the long-term climate of Pluto*.”

Principal Investigator Stern reporting on evidence that Pluto's long-term polar axis shifts drive sharp changes in the planet's atmospheric pressure over time, possibly causing Pluto's atmosphere to be much more massive than that of even Mars. “*This opens up the possibility that liquid nitrogen may have once or even many times flowed on Pluto's surface*.”

Orkan Umurhan, postdoctoral researcher from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, discussing the discovery and extensive variety of glacial landforms, glacial flow, and glacial erosion across Pluto. “*There are two likely scenarios for the erosion we see. It could be gradual, when much of Pluto's nitrogen ice was lost over time. Or, it could be part of a cycle in which the nitrogen ice evaporates and redeposits on the highlands, before flowing back into the plains. In all likelihood, both scenarios have been and still are operating*.” 

Kelsi Singer, postdoctoral researcher from SwRI, reporting on the first age-dating of Pluto's satellite system from crater counts, showing for the first time that the *giant impact believed to have created all of Pluto's known satellites cannot be recent and instead occurred some 4 billion years ago*.


----------



## Drone (Mar 22, 2016)

The Contraction/Expansion History of Charon with implication for its Planetary Scale Tectonic Belt



The New-Horizons mission to the Kuiper Belt has recently revealed intriguing features on the surface of Charon, including a network of chasmata, cutting across or around a series of high topography features, conjoining to form a belt. It is proposed that this *tectonic belt* is a consequence of contraction/expansion episodes in the moon's evolution associated particularly with compaction, differentiation and geophysical reactions of the interior. The proposed scenario involves no need for solidification of a vast subsurface ocean and/or a warm initial state. This scenario is based on a new, detailed thermo-physical evolution model of Charon that includes multiple processes. According to the model, Charon experienced two contraction/expansion episodes in its history that may provide the proper environment for the formation of the tectonic belt.

However, there may be a different alternative to explain Charon's surface features. A cold initial state could be consistent with all three formation scenarios currently proposed in the scientific literature for Charon:

1) The hypothesis that Pluto and Charon formed in place as a pair
2) Charon was captured by Pluto
3) Charon formed as a result of a giant impact into Pluto (currently the favored hypothesis).


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 22, 2016)

Pluto's surface may have been covered with lakes and rivers flowing of liquid nitrogen.
While much of this has now frozen, researchers suspect there maybe pockets of the liquid on the surface today.






Researchers say the large flat areas on Pluto's surface were likely formed by bodies of still liquid and the terrain networks could be a result of nitrogen rivers. Broken terrain on the northwestern edge of the vast, icy plain informally called Sputnik Planum


They believe the dwarf planet held enough atmospheric pressure at the time to increase temperatures where it could support liquid nitrogen on the crust. 

Researchers are excited about this new finding, as it could solve the mystery that has surrounded the Pluto's surface.
'We see what for all the world looks to a lot of our team like a former lake,' said mission leader Alan Stern.
'It's very smooth, as if a liquid has frozen across one height.'
'It's hard to come up with an alternate model that would explain that morphology.'
The idea of nitrogen ice melting on a celestial body 3.67 million miles from the sun, may sound absurd, but scientists believe it is because of Pluto's unique rotation.
This discovery was made by analyzing data from New Horizon's model that is based on the history of Pluto's climate and atmospheric pressure, reports *New Scientist*.






Researchers are excited about this new finding, as it could solve the mystery that has surrounded the Pluto's surface. Ancient, heavily cratered terrain is seen coated with dark, reddish tholins. The flat areas may once been pools of liquid nitrogen


----------



## Drone (Mar 23, 2016)

Oberon, moon of Uranus (left), and Charon, moon of Pluto (right). These worlds are of similar size and both exhibit intriguing geology.






















Some old images of models of Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt dust influx to Pluto.


----------



## Drone (Mar 27, 2016)

Unposted diagrams and a video


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Apr 5, 2016)

Scientists say they have evidence that dense frozen nitrogen in this region, known as Tombaugh Regio, changed the dwarf planet's orientation.






The theory was announced last week at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.
Researchers believe an area known as Sputnik Planum - which lies to the west side of the heart - forms the remnants of a large crater now filled with nitrogen ice.
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/

Unlike Earth, whose spin axis is only slightly tilted, Pluto is like a spinning top lying on its side.
This means, the dwarf planet's poles get the most sunlight.
Over the course of a Pluto year, nitrogen and other exotic gases condense on the permanently shadowed regions.








Sputnik Planum, the left lobe of Pluto’s heart, is a expanse of frozen nitrogen that lies close to the dwarf planet’s equator — too close to be a coincidence, two planetary researchers suggest. So much ice has piled up here that it could have dragged Pluto with it and reoriented its spin axis. Charon is seen in the background


Eventually, as Pluto goes around the sun, those frozen gases heat up, become gaseous again and re-condense on the other side of the planet.
'Each time Pluto goes around the sun, a bit of nitrogen accumulates in the heart,' said James Keane of the University of Tuscon, Arizona, who led one of the teams.
'And once enough ice has piled up, maybe a hundred meters thick, it starts to overwhelm the planet's shape, which dictates the planet's orientation.
'And if you have an excess of mass in one spot on the planet, it wants to go to the equator. Eventually, over millions of years, it will drag the whole planet over.'
Keane's team used observations made during New Horizons' flyby and combined them with computer models.
The models allowed them to take a surface feature such as Sputnik Planum, and shift it around on the planet's surface to see what that does to the planet's spin axis.

This area seems to line up 'suspiciously well' with the tidal axis that links Pluto to its large moon, Charon, scientists.
The tidal axis is an imaginary line that wraps around the dwarf planet, and indicates where the gravitational pull from the Charon is the strongest.
'If Sputnik Planum were a large positive mass anomaly — perhaps due to loading of nitrogen ice — then (it) would naturally migrate to the tidal axis as Pluto approaches a minimum energy state,' Keane and Matsuyama write.
This means the massive accumulation of ice would end up where it causes the least wobble in Pluto's spin axis.
This phenomenon of polar wander — a planet shifting its spin axis — is something that was discovered with the Earth's moon and with Mars, as well, but in those cases it happened in the distant past, billions of years ago.


----------



## Drone (Apr 5, 2016)

NASA's New Horizons Fills Gap in Space Environment Observations






Maaan, this gif gives me a headache .....

Space environment data collected by New Horizons over a billion miles of its journey to Pluto will play a key role in testing and improving models of the space environment throughout the solar system. This visualization is one example of such a model: It shows the simulated space environment out to Pluto a few months before New Horizons’ closest approach.

Drawn over the model is the path of New Horizons up to 2015, as well as the current direction of the two Voyager spacecraft - which are currently at 3-4 times New Horizons’ distance from the sun. The solar wind that New Horizons encountered will reach the Voyager spacecraft about a year later.






This figure shows solar wind observations measured by New Horizons from Jan. 1 - Aug. 25, 2015. This measurement of seed particles for anomalous cosmic rays in the solar wind is completely new in this region of space and is key for interpreting Voyager data further out in the interstellar boundary region. Points closer to the top of the graph correspond to higher-energy particles, and red and yellow colors show a larger number of particles hitting the detector. The particle instruments were shut down during certain spacecraft operations and trajectory maneuvers, resulting in brief data gaps.


----------



## Drone (Apr 7, 2016)

As shown in the enhanced color image above this feature consists of at least six extensional fractures (indicated by white arrows) converging to a point near the center. The longest fractures are aligned roughly north-south, and the longest of all, the informally named Sleipnir Fossa, is > 580 km long.

The curious radiating pattern of the fractures forming the '_spider_' may be caused by a focused source of stress in the crust under the point where the fractures converge.






Location of the 'spider' at the eastern edge of Pluto.


----------



## Drone (Apr 16, 2016)

new mosaic

















Pluto's Haze Varies in Brightness

The brightness variations may be due to buoyancy/gravity waves which are typically launched by the flow of air over mountain ranges. Atmospheric gravity waves are known to occur on Earth, Mars and now, likely, Pluto as well.


----------



## Drone (Apr 21, 2016)

The upper image sports several dozen “haloed” craters. The largest crater, at bottom-right, measures ~50 km across. The craters' bright walls and rims stand out from their dark floors and surrounding terrain, creating the halo effect.

The lower image indicates a connection between the bright halos and distribution of methane ice, shown in false color as purple. The floors and terrain between craters show signs of water ice, colored in blue. Exactly _why_ the bright methane ice settles on these crater rims and walls is a mystery; also puzzling is why this same effect doesn't occur broadly across Pluto.


----------



## alucasa (Apr 21, 2016)

Holy shit, possible clouds on Pluto?!
That changes almost everything I know about Pluto.


----------



## Drone (May 4, 2016)

*Pluto behaves less like a comet than expected and somewhat more like a planet* like Mars or Venus in the way it interacts with the solar wind.

Previously, most researchers thought that Pluto was characterized more like a comet, which has a large region of gentle slowing of the solar wind, as opposed to the abrupt diversion solar wind encounters at a planet like Mars or Venus.

Since Pluto is the farthest planet in the solar system and because it's the smallest, scientists thought Pluto's gravity wouldn't be strong enough to hold heavy ions in its extended atmosphere. But *Pluto's gravity clearly is enough to keep material relatively confined*.

The researchers were able to separate the heavy ions of methane, the main gas escaping from Pluto's atmosphere, from the light ions of hydrogen that come from the Sun.

Among additional Pluto findings:


Like Earth, Pluto has a long ion tail, that extends downwind at least a distance of about 100 Pluto radii, loaded with heavy ions from the atmosphere and with 'considerable structure'.
Pluto's obstruction of the solar wind upwind of the planet is smaller than had been thought. The solar wind isn't blocked until about the distance of a couple planetary radii (distance between Chicago and Los Angeles).
Pluto has a very thin boundary of Pluto's tail of heavy ions and the sheath of the shocked solar wind that presents an obstacle to its flow.






New image uploaded by NH team


----------



## dorsetknob (May 4, 2016)

Scientist keep coming up with these pluto facts" like it behaves like a planet"
That's Because it is a Planet  it has a atmosphere and it has 5 Moons ( again it was a political decision to Quote "Demote it to minor planet)".


----------



## Drone (May 4, 2016)

Planet or not, it doesn't even matter. We're all Sun's satellites. Sun revolves around Milky Way, Milky Way is a part of Local Group, Local Group is a tiny piece of Laniakea. And anyway back in the day there was nothing but quantum fluctuations.


Heh, I've learned a new word: Plutopause

Now more info from *American Geophysical Union* about Pluto's interactions with the solar wind

And their diagrams:







Using data from an instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft gathered on its Pluto flyby in July 2015, scientists have observed the material coming off of Pluto and seen how it interacts with the solar wind. This figure shows the size scale of Pluto's interaction with the solar wind derived from the data. The bow shock is indicated by the extension of the locations where the study's authors measured the light, solar wind ions to be ~ 20% slowed down from the upstream solar wind speed. The Plutopause (purple) is a finite-sized boundary layer ~ 0.9 Pluto radii thick at the nose and separates the solar wind (blue) from the heavy ion tail (red). Even though the heavy ion tail extends back >100 Pluto radii at the time of the New Horizons flyby, the upstream interaction is very compact and the bow shock is almost compressed onto the obstacle.






Schematic diagram of Pluto's interaction with the solar wind as inferred from SWAP observations along the trajectory of the New Horizons flyby. New Horizons crossed the Sun-Pluto line from the dawn/southern portion of the tail (dashed portion of trajectory) into the dusk/northern (solid portion of the trajectory in the cutaway) at ~ 44 Pluto radii down tail. Portions of the trajectory inside the heavy ion tail behind Pluto are indicated in red and light ion sheath that surrounds the tail are in blue. The bow shock observed near Pluto has dissipated into just a bow wave by the distance back that New Horizons exited through it.


----------



## Drone (May 6, 2016)

New compositional data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal *nearly pristine water ice* on the surface of Pluto's outermost moon, *Hydra*.

The Hydra infrared spectrum is similar to that of Charon, which is also dominated by crystalline water ice. But Hydra's water-ice absorption bands are even deeper than Charon's, suggesting that ice grains on Hydra's surface are larger or reflect more light at certain angles than the grains on Charon. _Hydra is thought to have formed in an icy debris disk produced when water-rich mantles were stripped from the two bodies that collided to form the Pluto-Charon binary some 4 billion years ago_. Hydra's deep water bands and high reflectance imply relatively little contamination by darker material that has accumulated on Charon's surface over time.


----------



## Drone (May 27, 2016)

*This is the most detailed view of Pluto's terrain you'll see for a very long time*. This is the _highest-resolution_ mosaic by the NASA probe (80 m/pixel). The mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.


----------



## R-T-B (May 27, 2016)

dorsetknob said:


> again it was a political decision to Quote "Demote it to minor planet)".



How could it be anything else?  Planets and moons don't come with the word "PLANET" and "MOON" etched into their surface for people who look closely enough, it's HUMAN definitions and POLITICS that determine what the terms mean, same as any dictionary term or what have you.


----------



## Drone (Jun 1, 2016)

New processed videos


----------



## Drone (Jun 6, 2016)

New Stamps Honoring NASA Planetary Discoveries

8 new colorful Forever stamps – each shown twice – feature Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.







and Pluto + New Horizons stamps










And new processed video:










Pluto's 'Twilight Zone'

This movie is based on image of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015.
Seen here, sunlight filters through and illuminates Pluto's complex atmospheric haze layers. The southern portions of the nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as well as mountains of the informally named Norgay Montes, can also be seen across Pluto's crescent.

At the beginning you can see an intriguing bright wisp measuring tens of miles across that may be a discreet, low-lying cloud in Pluto's atmosphere; if so, it would be the only one yet identified in New Horizons imagery. This cloud - if that's what it is - is visible for the same reason the haze layers are so bright: illumination from the sunlight grazing Pluto's surface at a low angle. Atmospheric models suggest that methane clouds can occasionally form in Pluto's atmosphere.
Also you can see how the setting sun illuminates a fog or near-surface haze, which is cut by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains.


----------



## Niteblooded (Jun 21, 2016)

Liked this photo when it released.

Pluto Haze



> This image of haze layers above Pluto's limb was taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. About 20 haze layers are seen; the layers have been found to typically extend horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but are not strictly parallel to the surface. For example, white arrows indicate a haze layer about three miles (five kilometers) above the surface on the left, which has descended to the surface at the right.


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jun 23, 2016)

New analysis shows the ocean beneath the surface is still liquid  - raising hopes that signs of life could yet be discovered on the dwarf planet.





This image from the New Horizons spacecraft shows the dark, rugged highlands known as Krun Macula (lower right), which border a section of Pluto’s icy plains. Evidence for plate tectonics suggests there is still a liquid ocean beneath the planet's surface

'Thanks to the incredible data returned by New Horizons, we were able to observe tectonic features on Pluto's surface, update our thermal evolution model with new data and infer that Pluto most likely has a subsurface ocean today,' said Noah Hammond, a graduate student at Brown University, and the study's lead author.

The study found if Pluto's ocean had frozen into oblivion millions or billions of years ago, it would have caused the entire planet to shrink. 

But there are no signs of Pluto contracting. In fact, New Horizons showed signs Pluto has been expanding.

The dwarf planet also has giant tectonic features, sinuous faults hundreds of miles long as deep as 2.4 miles (4 kilometres). It was those tectonic features that got scientists thinking that a subsurface ocean was a real possibility for Pluto.

"What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion. A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion," lead author Noah Hammond, a Ph.D student from Brown University, said in a statement. The research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.


----------



## Drone (Jul 2, 2016)

New discoveries and images:


----------



## Ikaruga (Jul 12, 2016)




----------



## Drone (Jul 12, 2016)

Pluto's Intriguing Moons in a Minute










And here's a new processed video










NASA's planned missions through 2030


----------



## Drone (Jul 14, 2016)

New Horizons: 1 year later






The powerful instruments on New Horizons not only gave scientists insight on what Pluto looked like, their data also confirmed (or, in many cases, dispelled) their ideas of what Pluto was made of. These compositional maps – assembled using data from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) component of the Ralph instrument – indicate the regions rich in ices of methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2), carbon monoxide (CO) and water ice (H2O).















Illustration of Pluto and its next science target, 2014 MU69, with the trajectory of New Horizons in yellow.


----------



## Drone (Jul 17, 2016)

new processed video 










This movie is created using > 800 images taken by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons (July 8-21, 2015).
This sequence is incomplete, because some of the images were still on board the spacecraft at the time when this video was created.


----------



## Drone (Aug 22, 2016)

Kuiper Belt diagram by NASA and here's a new processed video:


----------



## alucasa (Aug 22, 2016)

Gosh dang it. Can we live on ANY of these awesome planets?


----------



## Drone (Aug 28, 2016)

New processed video by New Horizons team: Close-Up of Charon's Surface


----------



## Drone (Aug 31, 2016)

The area shown above is south of Pluto’s dark equatorial band informally named Cthulhu Regio, and southwest of the vast nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as the mission team recently redesignated the area to more accurately reflect the low elevation of the plains. North is at the top; in the western portion of the image, a chain of bright mountains extends north into Cthulhu Regio. The mountains reveal themselves as snowcapped—something hauntingly familiar from our Earthbased experience. But New Horizons compositional data indicate the bright snowcap material covering these mountains isn’t water, but atmospheric methane that has condensed as frost onto these surfaces at high elevation. Between some mountains are sharply cut valleys – indicated by the white arrows below. These valleys are each a few miles across and tens of miles long.







New Horizons recently observed the Kuiper Belt object *Quaoar*, which – at 1100 km in diameter – is roughly half the size of Pluto.







When these images were taken, Quaoar was ~ 6.4 billion km from the Sun and 2.1 billion km from New Horizons. In addition to many background stars, two far away galaxies – IC 1048 and UGC 09485, each ~ 370 billion times farther from New Horizons than Quaoar – are also visible in these images. Unlike the galaxies and stars, Quaoar appears to move across the background scene due to its much closer distance. Other objects which appear to move in these images are camera artifacts.


----------



## Drone (Sep 6, 2016)

New Horizons 360/3D/VR videos

(by New York Times & California Academy of Sciences)


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 14, 2016)

A study of images beamed back by Nasa's New Horizon's space probe may now have uncovered what causes the dark red patch that stains the top of  Charon.

Named after the shadowy lands that were home to the evil Sauron in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it appears the area is being created by methane gas trapped on the surface.








Researchers claim the methane may have leaked out from Pluto's atmosphere and been trapped at Charon's pole as the moon passes through the stream of methane.


They say this area of Charon spends long periods in shadow, meaning temperatures drop to extremely low enough to trap the methane as ice.

After a long winter, the pole is then exposed to sunlight which triggers chemical reactions in the methane ice that produce the red colour.

Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Will Grundy, an expert on the outer solar system at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and his colleagues said it could explain similar reddish spots found on Pluto's other moons such as Nix.


----------



## Drone (Sep 14, 2016)

More links/pics/findings and a video










Pluto ‘Paints’ its Largest Moon Red

Pluto: X-ray Detection Sheds New Light on Pluto








Using Chandra, scientists have detected *X-rays from Pluto for the first time*.


This low-energy X-ray emission comes from interaction between Pluto's atmosphere and Solar Wind


Pluto occultation



On 19 July 2016, Pluto passed in front of the faint star *UCAC4 345-180315*, offering a rare chance to study the atmosphere of the dwarf planet as the star first gradually disappeared and then reappeared behind Pluto.

The image shows the star and Pluto, 5 minutes before the event (top), then Pluto passing in front of the star (center), then again the star and Pluto, 5 minutes after the event (bottom).


----------



## Drone (Sep 18, 2016)




----------



## Drone (Sep 20, 2016)

Scientists Reveal What Made the Huge Heart on Pluto










The half heart glacier lying inside is a really massive glacier, which is not impacted by the seasonal changes. It probably formed when the basin formed, and will remain there in the future. However, it probably flows and retracts over a few hundreds of kilometers (like a heart beating) with time, eroding and shaping the mountains surrounding it.

Source 1

Source 2


----------



## Drone (Sep 24, 2016)

Pluto's heart sheds light on a possible buried ocean


----------



## Drone (Oct 18, 2016)

Pluto's present, hazy atmosphere is almost entirely free of clouds, though scientists from NASA's New Horizons mission have identified some cloud candidates after examining images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager.






Serenity Chasma, Charon.

New Horizons scientists have spotted signs of long run-out landslides.


----------



## Drone (Oct 26, 2016)




----------



## Drone (Oct 28, 2016)

New Horizons videos by Vox



















Brand new processed video by New Horizons team. Sunrise on Pluto


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Oct 29, 2016)

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the last bit of data from its 2015 flyby of Pluto.

The picture — one of a sequence of shots of Pluto and its big moon, Charon — arrived earlier this week at Mission Control in Maryland. 

It took more than five hours for the image to reach Earth from New Horizons, some 3 billion miles away.


In all, more than 50 gigabits of data were relayed over the past 15 months to Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. 

The final data arrived Tuesday, and NASA announced the safe arrival Thursday.

The team will make absolutely certain nothing got left behind, before erasing the recorders to make room for future observations.

Now the spacecraft is 350 million miles from the dwarf planet and aiming for 2014 MU69, another remote object in the Kuiper Belt.


----------



## Ikaruga (Nov 13, 2016)




----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Nov 13, 2016)

Now thats what i call a planet.


----------



## Drone (Nov 16, 2016)

Torrent of news about Pluto and its heart:

Lots of stuff, see links images and videos










Data from New Horizons mission suggest a *water-ice ocean* lies beneath Pluto's heart-shaped basin




































PopSci (full article)
Wired (more info and video)


----------



## Drone (Nov 17, 2016)

2 new videos from NASA'S Chandra and euronews


----------



## Drone (Nov 19, 2016)

An interview with MIT professor about the recent discovery


----------



## Drone (Nov 24, 2016)

Can't remember if I posted these before







It's kinda mindblowing that Pluto and Charon are locked in eternal dance and Pluto with its cold but pulsing heart, which may have an ocean beneath, just faces away from Charon. And all that stuff is rich in CO, methane, water and nitrogen ices. And even there, so many AUs away, Solar wind still hits them and produces some cool X-rays. Come on, it's fantastic. It's .. I dunno it's just awesome. Few years ago I wouldn't have given a flying fuck about stuff like this, was busy with computers and other hardware. Really happy that I don't care about that stuff anymore. Science and truth forever, everything else is transitory. But I digress


----------



## Drone (Nov 30, 2016)

A new study led by Douglas Hamilton, professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, suggests that Sputnik Planitia formed early in Pluto's history.

“The main difference between my model and others is that I suggest that the ice cap formed early, when Pluto was still spinning quickly, and that the basin formed later and not from an impact,” said Hamilton, who is lead author of the paper. “The ice cap provides a slight asymmetry that either locks toward or away from Charon when Pluto's spin slows to match the orbital motion of the moon.”


----------



## Drone (Dec 2, 2016)

*Could there be life in Pluto's ocean?*​

Pluto is thought to possess a subsurface ocean, which is not so much a sign of water as it is a tremendous clue that other dwarf planets in deep space also may contain similarly exotic oceans, naturally leading to the question of life, said one co-investigator with NASA's New Horizon mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

William McKinnon, professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a co-author on two of four new Pluto studies published Dec. 1 in Nature, argues that *beneath the heart-shaped region on Pluto known as Sputnik Planitia there lies an ocean laden with ammonia*.

The presence of the *pungent, colorless liquid* helps to explain not only Pluto's orientation in space but also the persistence of the massive, ice-capped ocean that other researchers call “slushy” — but McKinnon prefers to depict as *syrupy*.

“In fact, New Horizons has detected *ammonia* as a compound on Pluto's big moon, Charon, and on one of Pluto's small moons. So it's almost certainly inside Pluto,” McKinnon said. “What I think is down there in the ocean is rather noxious, very cold, salty and very ammonia-rich — almost a syrup.

“It's no place for germs, much less fish or squid, or any life as we know it,” he added. “But as with the methane seas on Titan — Saturn's main moon — *it raises the question of whether some truly novel life forms could exist in these exotic, cold liquids*.”

“The idea that bodies of Pluto's scale, of which there are more than one out there in the Kuiper Belt, they could all have these kinds of oceans. But they'd be very *exotic* compared to what we think of as an ocean”.

“Life can tolerate a lot of stuff:  It can tolerate a lot of salt, extreme cold, extreme heat, etc. But I don't think it can tolerate the amount of ammonia Pluto needs to prevent its ocean from freezing — ammonia is a superb antifreeze. Not that ammonia is all bad. On Earth, microorganisms in the soil fix nitrogen to ammonia, which is important for making DNA and proteins and such.

“If you’re going to talk about life in an ocean that’s completely covered with an ice shell, it seems most likely that the best you could hope for is some extremely primitive kind of organism. It might even be pre-cellular, like we think the earliest life on Earth was.”

The newly published research delves into the creation — likely by a 125-mile-wide Kuiper Belt object striking Pluto more than 4 billion years ago — of the basin that includes Sputnik Planitia.

The collapse of the huge crater lifts Pluto's subsurface ocean, and the dense water — combined with dense surface nitrogen ice that fills in the hole — forms a huge mass excess that causes Pluto to tip over, reorienting itself with respect to Charon.

But the ocean uplift won't last if warm water ice at the base of the covering ice shell can flow and adjust in the manner of glaciers on Earth. Add enough ammonia to the water, and it can chill to incredibly cold temperatures (down to minus 145 Fahrenheit) and still be liquid, even if quite viscous, like chilled pancake syrup. At these temperatures, water ice is rigid, and the uplifted surface ocean becomes permanent.

“All of these ideas about an ocean inside Pluto are credible, but they are inferences, not direct detections,” McKinnon said, sounding the call. “If we want to confirm that such an ocean exists,  we will need gravity measurements or subsurface radar sounding, all of which could be accomplished by a future orbiter mission to Pluto. It's up to the next generation to pick up where New Horizons left off!”




View of Pluto with color-coded topography as measured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. Purple and blue are low and yellow and red are high, and the informally named *Sputnik Planitia* stands out at top as a broad, 1300 km wide, 2.5 km deep elliptical basin, most likely the *site of an ancient impact on Pluto*. New Horizons data imply that *deep beneath this nitrogen-ice filled basin is an ocean of dense, salty, ammonia-rich water*.


----------



## Drone (Jan 2, 2017)

New video:


----------



## Drone (Jan 4, 2017)

Researchers found evidence that *snow and ice features previously only seen on Earth, have been spotted on Pluto*.

_“Penitentes” which are formed by erosion, are bowl-shaped depressions with spires around the edge, and are several metres high._

The groundbreaking research, done in collaboration with researchers at NASA and Johns Hopkins University, indicates that* these icy features may exist on other planets where environmental conditions are similar*.


----------



## Drone (Jan 13, 2017)

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides additional insight into *how Charon affects the continuous stripping of Pluto's atmosphere by solar wind.*

*When Charon is positioned between Sun and Pluto it can significantly reduce atmospheric loss*.

Charon doesn't always have its own atmosphere. But when it does, it creates a shield for Pluto and redirects much of the solar wind around and away.

This barrier creates a more acute angle of Pluto's bow shock, slowing down the deterioration of the atmosphere. When Charon doesn't have an atmosphere, or when it's behind or next to Pluto (a term scientists call “downstream”), then Charon has only a minor effect on the interaction of the solar wind with Pluto.

As a result, Pluto still has more of its volatile elements, which have long since been blown off the inner planets by solar wind. Even at its great distance from the Sun, Pluto is slowly losing its atmosphere. Knowing the rate at which Pluto's atmosphere is being lost can tell us how much atmosphere it had to begin with, and therefore what it looked like originally. From there, we can get an idea of what the Solar System was made of during its formation.


----------



## Drone (Jan 21, 2017)




----------



## Drone (Feb 1, 2017)




----------



## Drone (Feb 17, 2017)

new video by ESA:


----------



## Drone (Mar 4, 2017)

The Secrets of Pluto’s Thin Blue Line


----------

