New Horizons Pluto Encounter

[Scepticalscribe]

This is better than Star Wars!

No. This is better even than Star Trek…….which is my blueprint (I was almost about to write 'Bible') for such things……

In fact, a remembered thrill of the sheer joy of exploration and discovery ('to explore strange new worlds' - alas, the rest of it doesn't quite apply just yet) takes place - in my mind - to the accompanying stage whisper of that gloriously immortal and optimistic Star Trek Mission Statement…..

 

[Sydde]

I say better even than Forbidden Planet — there just have to be monsters from the id there. Or on Charon, Nix or Hydra. With names like those, we simply cannot expect Elysian Fields.

 

[aaronvan]

It's better than It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

 

[ucfgrad93]

6 days 18 hours 4 minutes and 8,041,643 km to go.

 

[obeygiant]

The recovery from a July 4 anomaly that sent the New Horizons spacecraft into safe mode is proceeding according to plan, with the mission team preparing to return to normal science operations on time on July 7.

Mission managers reported during a July 6 media teleconference that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft resumed operations on its main computer overnight. The sequence of commands for the Pluto flyby have now been uplinked to the spacecraft, and full, as-planned science observations of Pluto, its moons and the solar winds will resume at 12:34 p.m. EDT July 7.

The quick response to the weekend computer glitch assures that the mission remains on track to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned, including the July 14 flyby observations of Pluto. "We're delighted with the New Horizons response to the anomaly," said Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. "Now we're eager to get back to the science and prepare for the payoff that's yet to come."

The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter safe mode on July 4 has confirmed that the main computer was overloaded due to a timing conflict in the spacecraft command sequence. The computer was tasked with receiving a large command load at the same time it was engaged in compressing previous science data. The main computer responded precisely as it was programmed to do, by entering safe mode and switching to the backup computer.

Thirty observations were lost during the three-day recovery period, representing less than one percent of the total science that the New Horizons team hoped to collect between July 4 and July 16. None of the mission's most critical observations were affected. There's no risk that this kind of anomaly could happen again before flyby, as no similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.

"This is a speed bump in terms of the total return we expect to receive from this historic mission," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator with the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "When we get a clear look at the surface of Pluto for the very first time, I promise, it will knock your socks off."

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150706-2

 

[obeygiant]

its only going to get better

 

[Scepticalscribe]

its only going to get better

Cool. Seriously cool - and fascinating comparison.

Pluto was always a distant blob, well off the beaten orbital path of the other planets, and so it is absolutely fascinating to get to see what it actually looks like.

 

[ucfgrad93]

its only going to get better

Agreed! I'm very excited.

4 days 21 hours 20 minutes and 5,824,000 km to go!

 

[SandboxGeneral]

Here is a silly question, because I don't know, why didn't NASA (or maybe they did) point the Hubble Space Telescope at Pluto to get images of it? I mean, since it can get great photos of galaxies billions of light years away, I'd assume it can get a real good shot of Pluto.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Here is a silly question, because I don't know, why didn't NASA (or maybe they did) point the Hubble Space Telescope at Pluto to get images of it? I mean, since it can get great photos of galaxies billions of light years away, I'd assume it can get a real good shot of Pluto.

Look up 3 posts (post #31) and see what @obeygiant posted.

 

[SandboxGeneral]

Look up 3 posts and see what @obeygiant posted.

D'oh! <insert facepalm>

Thanks.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Look up 3 posts (post #31) and see what @obeygiant posted.

D'oh! <insert facepalm>

Thanks.

Yes, that is what I found so extraordinarily interesting about what @obeygiant had posted.

The very best telescope ever crafted from Earth could still only show us a vaguely dappled sphere where Pluto is known to lurk.

Contrast that with the increasingly sharp and strangely compelling images being transmitted by the 'New Horizons' craft as it approaches the planet (dwarf planet? - I'll admit that I was rather upset when Pluto was demoted from its original classification in what was possibly an over preciously precise definition of the word 'planet'.)

 

[obeygiant]

Here is a silly question, because I don't know, why didn't NASA (or maybe they did) point the Hubble Space Telescope at Pluto to get images of it? I mean, since it can get great photos of galaxies billions of light years away, I'd assume it can get a real good shot of Pluto.

I think Hubble takes better images of galaxies because they are enormous, as in 100,000s of light years across. Pluto is only 1471 miles across, 3 billion miles away and doesn't emit any light. Hubble maybe has an easier time creating an image with some of the distant galaxies.

 

[OLDCODGER]

I think Hubble takes better images of galaxies because they are enormous, as in 100,000s of light years across. Pluto is only 1471 miles across, 3 billion miles away and doesn't emit any light. Hubble maybe has an easier time creating an image with some of the distant galaxies.

There is also the possibility that Hubble's focus is aligned to infinity, rather than "near earth objects".

 

[SandboxGeneral]

There is also the possibility that Hubble's focus is aligned to infinity, rather than "near earth objects".

That's kind of what I was assuming when I thought more about it.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

There is also the possibility that Hubble's focus is aligned to infinity, rather than "near earth objects".

That's kind of what I was assuming when I thought more about it.

There could well be something in this, and it makes a lot of sense.

 

[SandboxGeneral]

Pluto in a Minute: Why A Flyby?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Pluto in a Minute: Why A Flyby?

Now, I am going to have visions of a baby grand piano hurtling through space at 33,000 mph, adjusting itself to take as sharp a look at that strange distant world of Pluto as a baby grand piano can manage while still planning its date with destiny in a few days time.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I have just been reading more about this in The Guardian. They mentioned that New Horizons reached 'record breaking' velocity on its take off, in 2006, and had flown past the orbit of the moon 'before the day was out'. Wow.

And then there was the sentence about how 'the gravity boost from Jupiter' shortened the length of time of the trip to Pluto by three years. Now, we all remember the Voyagers, and how Voyager 2 used a sort of sling shot effect to enable it to journey further faster, but I am awestruck that three years could be cut off a journey of that length. Absolutely extraordinary.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Pluto in a Minute: Why A Flyby?

Great video, thanks for posting it.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Great video, thanks for posting it.

View attachment 567670 View attachment 567673

What a fascinating readout. And thank you for posting it.

 

[obeygiant]

"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."

So far Pluto looks a lot more intriguing than I would have thought.

 

[aaronvan]

It looks like Triton, which itself is suspected to be a captured Kuiper Belt object.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

"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."

So far Pluto looks a lot more intriguing than I would have thought.

I have long thought it would be intriguing, and had wondered what form its features would take.

It looks like Triton, which itself is suspected to be a captured Kuiper Belt object.

That retrograde orbit, yes, hm.

But I suspect that we may also learn more about the curiously close relationship between Pluto and Charon, too.

 

[SactoGuy18]

It looks like Triton, which itself is suspected to be a captured Kuiper Belt object.

Considering that Triton and Pluto seem to share a lot of similar surface features, that may not be such a unusual suggestion.

New Horizons is reviving a lot of the excitement we remember from the Voyager missions from the late 1970's to later 1980's. And to think if they had went with the original flyby plan for Voyager 1, we would have gotten pictures from Pluto by 1990-1991.