NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Nears Historic July 14 Encounter with Pluto

[GodsEmbryo]

NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Nears Historic July 14 Encounter with Pluto

The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away – more than nine years and three billion miles – than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. Its flyby of Pluto and its system of at least five moons on July 14 will complete the initial reconnaissance of the classical solar system. This mission also opens the door to an entirely new “third” zone of mysterious small planets and planetary building blocks in the Kuiper Belt, a large area with numerous objects beyond Neptune’s orbit.

The flyby caps a five-decade-long era of reconnaissance that began with Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, and continued through first looks at Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s and Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.

Reaching this third zone of our solar system – beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer gas giants – has been a space science priority for years. In the early 2000s the National Academy of Sciences ranked the exploration of the Kuiper Belt – and particularly Pluto and its largest moon, Charon – as its top priority planetary mission for the coming decade.

New Horizons – a compact, lightweight, powerfully equipped probe packing the most advanced suite of cameras and spectrometers ever sent on a first reconnaissance mission – is NASA’s answer to that call.

The spacecraft’s suite of seven science instruments – which includes cameras, spectrometers, and plasma and dust detectors – will map the geology of Pluto and Charon and map their surface compositions and temperatures; examine Pluto’s atmosphere, and search for an atmosphere around Charon; study Pluto’s smaller satellites; and look for rings and additional satellites around Pluto.

Teams operating the spacecraft [...] skillfully navigate New Horizons toward a precise target point 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) from Pluto’s surface. That targeting is critical, since the computer commands that will orient the spacecraft and point its science instruments are based on knowing the exact time and location that New Horizons passes Pluto.

“Our team has worked hard to get to this point, and we know we have just one shot to make this work,” said Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, which built and operates the spacecraft. “We’ve plotted out each step of the Pluto encounter, practiced it over and over, and we’re excited the ‘real deal’ is finally here.”

The spacecraft’s work doesn’t end with the July flyby. Because it gets one shot at its target, New Horizons is designed to gather as much data as it can, as quickly as it can, taking about 100 times as much data on close approach as it can send home before flying away. And although the spacecraft will send select, high-priority datasets home in the days just before and after close approach, the mission will continue returning the data stored in onboard memory for a full 16 months.

Source: (shortened version from) NASA article

Image from July 9th



I've been following this for a while now and I'm pretty excited by this! Getting close... !

 

[RASQ]

Same here, took 9 years to get there and im ready to see some great pics of pluto. Now, I'm just sayin' but wouldn't it be funny if we find an alien civilization living on pluto and that they are green colored and they own slaves that are black colored, lol! I mean, what country on Earth would try and meddle into the alien culture to tell them that is it wrong to have slaves, lol!

 

[Mr. Daystar]

I think it would be funnier if some huge dinosaur like creature just picked the little spacecraft out of the sky, and started chowing down on it.

 

[GodsEmbryo]

Or a big sign reading "We apologize for the inconvenience".

Props if you get the reference

 

[Jagger69]

New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

There are supposed to be some really great shots of the fly-by that took place this morning once the uplink is restored tonight. This is awesome....the outermost edge of our solar system. Incredible! Now, we need to refund NASA and get our manned space program back to what it once was....the greatest in the world by far.

Three billion miles away, Pluto has sent a “love note” back to Earth, via NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

At about 4 p.m. EDT on July 13 - about 16 hours before closest approach - New Horizons captured this stunning image of one of Pluto's most dazzling and dominant features. The “heart,” estimated to be 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across at its widest point rests just above the equator. (The angle of view displays mostly the northern hemisphere.) The heart’s diameter is about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago, in America’s heartland.

“Wow!” said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, as the image was unveiled before the New Horizons science team at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “My prediction was that we would find something wonderful, and we did. This is proof that good things really do come in small packages.”

The newest image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shows an almost perfectly shaped left half of a bright, heart-shaped feature centered just above Pluto’s equator, while the right side of the heart appears to be less defined.

The image shows for the first time that some surfaces on Pluto are peppered with impact craters and are therefore relatively ancient, perhaps several billion years old. Other regions, such as the interior of the heart, show no obvious craters and thus are probably younger, indicating that Pluto has experienced a long and complex geological history. Some craters appear partially destroyed, perhaps by erosion. There are also hints that parts of Pluto’s crust have been fractured, as indicated by the series of linear features to the left of the heart.

Below the heart are dark terrains along Pluto’s equator, including, on the left, the large dark feature informally known as the “whale.” Craters pockmark part of the whale’s head; areas that appear smooth and featureless may be a result of image compression.

New Horizons traveled nearly a decade to receive its summertime valentine, launching on January 19, 2006.

This is just the latest in a series of the New Horizons Pluto "picture show." On Wednesday July 15, more images of surface close-ups will make the more than four-hour journey to Earth at the speed of light to give Pluto fans details as small as New York’s Central Park.

“Our data tomorrow (Wednesday, July 15) will have ten times the resolution of what we see today and it will knock your socks off,” said Stern.

Curt Niebur, New Horizons program scientist with NASA Headquarters in Washington notes, “The science is amazing, but the team’s excitement reminds me of why we really do this.”

At 7:49 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 14 New Horizons sped past Pluto at 30,800 miles per hour (49,600 kilometers per hour), with a suite of seven science instruments. As planned, New Horizons went incommunicado as it hurtled through the Pluto-Charon system busily gathering data. The New Horizons team will breathe a sigh of relief when New Horizons “phones home” at approximately 9:02 p.m. EDT on July 14. The mission to the icy dwarf planet completes the initial reconnaissance of the solar system.

See the images it has gathered so far here:

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/...e-journey-to-pluto-reaches-historic-encounter

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Re: New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

I'm still in mourning over losing Pluto as the 9th planet.

Pretty cool to see it proper though. However, I am disappointed in the lack of Uranus jokes around here.

 

[GodsEmbryo]

Signal Acquisition of New Horizons Spacecraft

The New Horizons spacecraft "phoned home" around 9:00 p.m. EDT, July 14, 2015, indicating that it had successfully completed its historic flyby of Pluto earlier in the day. Team members at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, cheered as they received the flyby confirmation. The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled more time and distance – more than nine years and three billion miles ¬– than any space mission before, to reach Pluto.

Congrats to the New Horizons Team, mission accomplished! And now once more it's waiting to recover data for about 16 loooong months *sigh*

Anyone who wants to tell a joke or a story while we're wating?

EDIT:

Note to admin: I noticed Jagger created a thread about this as well, maybe you could merge these threads?

 

[pool_hustler]

Congrats to the New Horizons Team, mission accomplished!

Absolutely :glugglug:

Great job team! :thumbsup:

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Note to admin: I noticed Jagger created a thread about this as well, maybe you could merge these threads?

Taken care of!

 

[freeones_regina]

Re: New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

I'm still in mourning over losing Pluto as the 9th planet.

Wasn't it reinstated as a planet last year or so?

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Re: New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

Wasn't it reinstated as a planet last year or so?

You've got to be kidding me..

 

[Jagger69]

Taken care of!

Thanks Adam....sorry, GE. Didn't notice your previous thread.

At less than 20kbps, it's going to take awhile for all the data to be transmitted back to earth. In the meantime, here's a look at a small segment of Pluto's surface that surprised scientists with its young and evolving group of water-ice mountains and a serious lack of impact craters.

 

[Rane1071]

Re: New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

Very cool stuff.

There's some great pics in the second link.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...izons-pluto-flyby-photos.html?smid=tw-nytimes

I'm still in mourning over losing Pluto as the 9th planet.

Pretty cool to see it proper though. However, I am disappointed in the lack of Uranus jokes around here.

Yeah I always think "poor Pluto, you got demoted didn't you" when I think of it now.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Re: New Horizons Mission Sending Spectacular Views of Pluto

Yeah I always think "poor Pluto, you got demoted didn't you" when I think of it now.

I know, kinda weird for them to call take back on that little guy.

Here's some cool info about Pluto and its demotion and more fun facts:


http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-pluto-k4.html

Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl from England. The dwarf planet has three moons. Its largest moon is named Charon (KER-ən). Charon is about half the size of Pluto.