Jan 15, 2014 by Dr. Tony Phillips
An artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto. Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Credit: JHUAPL/SwRI
One of the fastest spacecraft ever built—NASA's New Horizons—is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and it is nearing its destination: Pluto.
"The encounter begins next January," says Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute and the mission's principal investigator. "We're less than a year away."
Closest approach is scheduled for July 2015 when New Horizons flies only 10,000 km from Pluto, but the spacecraft will be busy long before that date. The first step, in January 2015, is an intensive campaign of photography by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager or "LORRI." This will help mission controllers pinpoint Pluto's location, which is uncertain by a few thousand kilometers.
"LORRI will photograph the planet against known background star fields," explains Stern. "We'll use the images to refine Pluto's distance from the spacecraft, and then fire the engines to make any necessary corrections."
At first, Pluto and its large moon Charon will be little more than distant pinpricks-"a couple of fat pixels," says Stern—but soon they will swell into full-fledged worlds.
By late April 2015, the approaching spacecraft will be taking pictures of Pluto that surpass the best images from Hubble. By closest approach in July 2015, a whole new world will open up to the spacecraft's cameras. If New Horizons flew over Earth at the same altitude, it could see individual buildings and their shapes.
Stern is looking forward to one of the most exciting moments of the Space Age.
"Humankind hasn't had an experience like this—an encounter with a new planet—in a long time," he says. "Everything we see on Pluto will be a revelation."
He likens New Horizons to Mariner 4, which flew past Mars in July 1965. At the time, many people on Earth, even some scientists, thought the Red Planet was a relatively gentle world, with water and vegetation friendly to life. Instead, Mariner 4 revealed a desiccated wasteland of haunting beauty. New Horizons' flyby of Pluto will occur almost exactly 50 years after Mariner 4's flyby of Mars-and it could shock observers just as much.
This video is not supported by your browser at this time.
Other than a few indistinct markings seen from afar by Hubble, Pluto's landscape is totally unexplored. Although some astronomers call Pluto a "dwarf" planet, Stern says there's nothing small about it. "If you drove a car around the equator of Pluto, the odometer would rack up almost 5,000 miles-as far as from Manhattan to Moscow." Such a traveler might encounter icy geysers, craters, clouds, mountain ranges, rilles and valleys, alongside alien landforms no one has ever imagined.
"There is a real possibility that New Horizons will discover new moons and rings as well," says Stern.
Yes, Pluto could have rings. Already, Pluto has five known moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Numerical simulations show that meteoroids striking those satellites could send debris into orbit, forming a ring system that waxes and wanes over time in response to changes in bombardment.
"We're flying into the unknown," says Stern, "and there is no telling what we might find."
Explore further: Charon revealed: New Horizons camera spots Pluto's largest moon
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User comments : 18
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Nerfherder
5 / 5 (2) 23 hours ago
Will it orbit the planet?
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (3) 23 hours ago
Returners
2 / 5 (2) 20 hours ago
Will it orbit the planet?
The Probe will be moving far too fast to stop and have orbital insertion.
It's unfortunate that they couldn't have made at least some kind of mini-probe that could shoot out and land on the surface or something.
Anyway, I hope none of the equipment craps out, like in Voyager which lost a camera or some such, so we can see as much as possible about this system.
It should still be "Summer" on Pluto, based on the elliptical orbit, not the axis. So I guess there'll still be some atmosphere around.
It's probably just a ball of ice with a few rocks from mountain peaks or asteroid/comet impacts visible, but who knows until they actually get some close-ups.
I guess I'm more interested in exact composition and mass, rather than parameters like topography.
We might see something truly bizarre, like large ice crystals on the surface, but maybe that's too sci-fi-ish, or maybe such things get broken quickly so don't last long. We'll see when we get there.
Dichotomy
1 / 5 (2) 20 hours ago
Glad to hear Pluto is back to being a planet! I always liked pluto and always thought that kicking pluto out of the family of planets was kinda like kicking out the family dog.
Tuxford
1 / 5 (5) 19 hours ago
shavera
5 / 5 (3) 18 hours ago
It's still officially a "dwarf planet" since it did not clear its orbit.
davidivad
3.5 / 5 (2) 17 hours ago
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
baudrunner
4.7 / 5 (3) 15 hours ago
From http://www.nasa.g...on1.html
Fast and efficient. Now we're talking.Spacecraft powered by these thrusters can reach speeds up to 90,000 meters per second (over 200,000 mph)...Deep Space 1 used less than 159 pounds of fuel in over 16,000 hours of thrusting.
Returners
2.3 / 5 (3) 15 hours ago
It's still officially a "dwarf planet" since it did not clear its orbit.
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
They had to make a contradictory exception to their own re-definition of "Planet".
Tuxford
1 / 5 (4) 13 hours ago
tuxford
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
Yes, but you will not like the answer, especially if you fell in love with the Huge Bang Fantasy.
yyz
5 / 5 (3) 13 hours ago
Strange that there is no mention of the images of Pluto and Charon already acquired by New Horizons and released in July 2013: http://www.space....oto.html
Returners
5 / 5 (1) 13 hours ago
"At first, Pluto and its large moon Charon will be little more than distant pinpricks-"a couple of fat pixels," says Stern—but soon they will swell into full-fledged worlds."
Strange that there is no mention of the images of Pluto and Charon already acquired by New Horizons and released in July 2013: http://www.space....oto.html
As long as they don't accidentally publish the photos in the wrong color scale, like they did with the first Mars photos.
crass
not rated yet 6 hours ago
Scratch that
Sinister1812
not rated yet 5 hours ago
Here's the key mission dates.
http://en.wikiped...on_dates
It's going to be a fly-by.
That's a shame. Wouldn't be long enough to find out much.
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (3) 4 hours ago
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
Do you even know what Trojans are and why they are where they are? If you did you would realize that it's impossible for a planet to clear any Trojans it has because it will never catch up with them.
Returners
5 / 5 (1) 2 hours ago
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
Do you even know what Trojans are and why they are where they are? If you did you would realize that it's impossible for a planet to clear any Trojans it has because it will never catch up with them.
It's impossible for Pluto to clear everything in it's orbit, because it too will never catch up with them; It "Crosses" Neptune's orbit, but it's not even on the same plane, at least it would take longer than the Sun's lifetime before a collision happened.
It's not about whether it will catch up or not. They made a rule, and then they made an exception to their own rule because they realized the other planets don't actually meet the requirements either.
There are other objects crossing over, or near, our orbits all the time, which everybody knows this.
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (2) 2 hours ago
So? How does that impact the definition.There are other objects crossing over, or near, our orbits all the time
You really should look at the definitions you use before you (wrongly) use it to support your 'arguments'.
here's the IAU definition
http://en.wikiped...finition
Here's what 'clearing the neighborhood' means (and why Pluto doesn't qualify based on that)
http://en.wikiped...bourhood
In any case: it's a label. It means nothing. Pluto will not behave one iota differently (or be any less interesting) whether we call it a planet or not.
Rohitasch
not rated yet 2 hours ago
tuxford
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
Yes, but you will not like the answer, especially if you fell in love with the Huge Bang Fantasy.
One has to check out the number of papers published on the Pioneer anomaly. From dark matter to this.
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Jan 15, 2014 by Dr. Tony Phillips
An artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto. Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Credit: JHUAPL/SwRI
One of the fastest spacecraft ever built—NASA's New Horizons—is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and it is nearing its destination: Pluto.
"The encounter begins next January," says Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute and the mission's principal investigator. "We're less than a year away."
Closest approach is scheduled for July 2015 when New Horizons flies only 10,000 km from Pluto, but the spacecraft will be busy long before that date. The first step, in January 2015, is an intensive campaign of photography by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager or "LORRI." This will help mission controllers pinpoint Pluto's location, which is uncertain by a few thousand kilometers.
"LORRI will photograph the planet against known background star fields," explains Stern. "We'll use the images to refine Pluto's distance from the spacecraft, and then fire the engines to make any necessary corrections."
At first, Pluto and its large moon Charon will be little more than distant pinpricks-"a couple of fat pixels," says Stern—but soon they will swell into full-fledged worlds.
By late April 2015, the approaching spacecraft will be taking pictures of Pluto that surpass the best images from Hubble. By closest approach in July 2015, a whole new world will open up to the spacecraft's cameras. If New Horizons flew over Earth at the same altitude, it could see individual buildings and their shapes.
Stern is looking forward to one of the most exciting moments of the Space Age.
"Humankind hasn't had an experience like this—an encounter with a new planet—in a long time," he says. "Everything we see on Pluto will be a revelation."
He likens New Horizons to Mariner 4, which flew past Mars in July 1965. At the time, many people on Earth, even some scientists, thought the Red Planet was a relatively gentle world, with water and vegetation friendly to life. Instead, Mariner 4 revealed a desiccated wasteland of haunting beauty. New Horizons' flyby of Pluto will occur almost exactly 50 years after Mariner 4's flyby of Mars-and it could shock observers just as much.
This video is not supported by your browser at this time.
Other than a few indistinct markings seen from afar by Hubble, Pluto's landscape is totally unexplored. Although some astronomers call Pluto a "dwarf" planet, Stern says there's nothing small about it. "If you drove a car around the equator of Pluto, the odometer would rack up almost 5,000 miles-as far as from Manhattan to Moscow." Such a traveler might encounter icy geysers, craters, clouds, mountain ranges, rilles and valleys, alongside alien landforms no one has ever imagined.
"There is a real possibility that New Horizons will discover new moons and rings as well," says Stern.
Yes, Pluto could have rings. Already, Pluto has five known moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Numerical simulations show that meteoroids striking those satellites could send debris into orbit, forming a ring system that waxes and wanes over time in response to changes in bombardment.
"We're flying into the unknown," says Stern, "and there is no telling what we might find."
Explore further: Charon revealed: New Horizons camera spots Pluto's largest moon
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User comments : 18
Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank
Display comments: newest first
Nerfherder
5 / 5 (2) 23 hours ago
Will it orbit the planet?
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (3) 23 hours ago
Returners
2 / 5 (2) 20 hours ago
Will it orbit the planet?
The Probe will be moving far too fast to stop and have orbital insertion.
It's unfortunate that they couldn't have made at least some kind of mini-probe that could shoot out and land on the surface or something.
Anyway, I hope none of the equipment craps out, like in Voyager which lost a camera or some such, so we can see as much as possible about this system.
It should still be "Summer" on Pluto, based on the elliptical orbit, not the axis. So I guess there'll still be some atmosphere around.
It's probably just a ball of ice with a few rocks from mountain peaks or asteroid/comet impacts visible, but who knows until they actually get some close-ups.
I guess I'm more interested in exact composition and mass, rather than parameters like topography.
We might see something truly bizarre, like large ice crystals on the surface, but maybe that's too sci-fi-ish, or maybe such things get broken quickly so don't last long. We'll see when we get there.
Dichotomy
1 / 5 (2) 20 hours ago
Glad to hear Pluto is back to being a planet! I always liked pluto and always thought that kicking pluto out of the family of planets was kinda like kicking out the family dog.
Tuxford
1 / 5 (5) 19 hours ago
Glad they are not relying on GR to plot the flyby, or they would miss. Photon blue shifting is a real problem at this distance.
shavera
5 / 5 (3) 18 hours ago
It's still officially a "dwarf planet" since it did not clear its orbit.
davidivad
3.5 / 5 (2) 17 hours ago
tuxford
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
baudrunner
4.7 / 5 (3) 15 hours ago
Gee, at a million miles a day, it would still take 12,330 years to get to Alpha Centauri. Something tells me we're still too primitive at this science. We have to do things to improve it. For example, New Horizons is cruising. With an ion thruster engine, it could be accelerating at a constant rate, and the craft would not take this long to get to where it is going.
From http://www.nasa.g...on1.html
Spacecraft powered by these thrusters can reach speeds up to 90,000 meters per second (over 200,000 mph)...Deep Space 1 used less than 159 pounds of fuel in over 16,000 hours of thrusting.
Fast and efficient. Now we're talking.
Returners
2.3 / 5 (3) 15 hours ago
It's still officially a "dwarf planet" since it did not clear its orbit.
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
They had to make a contradictory exception to their own re-definition of "Planet".
Tuxford
1 / 5 (4) 13 hours ago
tuxford
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
Yes, but you will not like the answer, especially if you fell in love with the Huge Bang Fantasy.
yyz
5 / 5 (3) 13 hours ago
"At first, Pluto and its large moon Charon will be little more than distant pinpricks-"a couple of fat pixels," says Stern—but soon they will swell into full-fledged worlds."
Strange that there is no mention of the images of Pluto and Charon already acquired by New Horizons and released in July 2013: http://www.space....oto.html
Returners
5 / 5 (1) 13 hours ago
"At first, Pluto and its large moon Charon will be little more than distant pinpricks-"a couple of fat pixels," says Stern—but soon they will swell into full-fledged worlds."
Strange that there is no mention of the images of Pluto and Charon already acquired by New Horizons and released in July 2013: http://www.space....oto.html
As long as they don't accidentally publish the photos in the wrong color scale, like they did with the first Mars photos.
crass
not rated yet 6 hours ago
Scratch that
Sinister1812
not rated yet 5 hours ago
Here's the key mission dates.
http://en.wikiped...on_dates
It's going to be a fly-by.
That's a shame. Wouldn't be long enough to find out much.
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (3) 4 hours ago
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
Do you even know what Trojans are and why they are where they are? If you did you would realize that it's impossible for a planet to clear any Trojans it has because it will never catch up with them.
Returners
5 / 5 (1) 2 hours ago
Jupiter hasn't cleared it's orbit either. r.e. Trojans.
Do you even know what Trojans are and why they are where they are? If you did you would realize that it's impossible for a planet to clear any Trojans it has because it will never catch up with them.
It's impossible for Pluto to clear everything in it's orbit, because it too will never catch up with them; It "Crosses" Neptune's orbit, but it's not even on the same plane, at least it would take longer than the Sun's lifetime before a collision happened.
It's not about whether it will catch up or not. They made a rule, and then they made an exception to their own rule because they realized the other planets don't actually meet the requirements either.
There are other objects crossing over, or near, our orbits all the time, which everybody knows this.
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (2) 2 hours ago
There are other objects crossing over, or near, our orbits all the time
So? How does that impact the definition.
You really should look at the definitions you use before you (wrongly) use it to support your 'arguments'.
here's the IAU definition
http://en.wikiped...finition
Here's what 'clearing the neighborhood' means (and why Pluto doesn't qualify based on that)
http://en.wikiped...bourhood
In any case: it's a label. It means nothing. Pluto will not behave one iota differently (or be any less interesting) whether we call it a planet or not.
Rohitasch
not rated yet 2 hours ago
tuxford
i take it you have a better alternative to GR?
Yes, but you will not like the answer, especially if you fell in love with the Huge Bang Fantasy.
One has to check out the number of papers published on the Pioneer anomaly. From dark matter to this.
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