New Horizons

Hotblack Desiato

I remember as a kid the Voyager encounters with Saturn and its moons in 81-82*, amazing stuff at the time and we learned much about its moons and rings, but I'm blown away by the detail and quality of the images from Pluto and Charon. Simply remarkable, and it should be remembered how much weaker sunlight is out there. The quality of the imaging is amazing. This was a part of the solar system of which we could see little and knew almost nothing, these remarkable images have produced yet more questions


* feck it I can remember when they got excited about volcanoes on Io it's really not all that long ago we had nothing other than blurry earth-based telescope pictures...

Rubecula

Sod it I remember Sputnik

Hotblack Desiato

I can remember when people thought Shuttle would be a cheap and safe way to reach orbit

irishgeo

any good place i can catch up on the all the info released so far?

_Tombstone_

irishgeo wrote: »

any good place i can catch up on the all the info released so far?

I haven't looked at it at all but the New Horizons Team released a paper the other day, covers alot of stuff.

http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2015/151015.asp

Or the two main sites, here and here I suppose.

_Tombstone_

Pic of Plutos last Moon - Kerberos (It's a blurry yoke for now)







http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/22/9598566/nasa-new-horizons-pluto-moon-kerberos

Gwynston

Kerberos looks similar in shape to comet 67P/Churyumov-Garasimenko which Rosetta visited:
Rosetta's Comet is Actually 2 Comets Glued Together

_Tombstone_

Pluto may have two ice volcanoes near its south pole

its moons behave pretty unexpectedly, too, NASA researchers also announced at the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. Pluto has one large moon, Charon, and four smaller moons: Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Pluto and Charon actually orbit around each other because they are pretty similar in size. The four smaller moons spin wildly around the planetary system. Hydra, for example, rotates 89 times as it completes one trip around Pluto. The moons also wobble like "spinning tops," thanks to the gravitational pulls of both Pluto and Charon. NASA thinks that the four wobbly moons are the results of mergers of two or more moons — meaning Pluto once had even more satellites than it does now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5aF6Bw56E

Capt'n Midnight

cryovolcanoes ?

cool

_Tombstone_

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-returns-first-of-the-best-images-of-pluto

_Tombstone_

New Horizons’ Sharpest Photos of Pluto, Now in Color

_Tombstone_

New Map shows Pluto is full of Water from the tears it cried when it lost Planet Status.





Pluto’s Mysterious, Floating Hills

Seems they've been stumped about these for a while, some of them are miles across and they move. They know now why, click if you dare.

_Tombstone_

Charon had a huge subterranean ocean that burst through it's surface and froze.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-hulk-like-moon-charon-a-possible-ancient-ocean

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 ocean. 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.

That would've been cool to see.

Capt'n Midnight

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

That would've been cool to see.

You would need a lot of patience as it wouldn't have been fast.

Geology can be strange, salt melts at 801 °C so should be solid here on planet earth but we have Salt Glaciers. So depending on temperature , local gravity and composition lots of things are possible.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

_Tombstone_

Five New Studies Reveal Just How Insanely Weird Pluto Is

Capt'n Midnight

just in case anyone was holding their breath, they've finished downloading all 50GB of data. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-returns-last-bits-of-2015-flyby-data-to-earth

Bowman said the team will conduct a final data-verification review before erasing the two onboard recorders, and clearing space for new data to be taken during the New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM) that will include a series of distant Kuiper Belt object observations and a close encounter with a small Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-possible-clouds-on-pluto-next-target-is-reddish

Hubble Space Telescope data suggests that 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) about a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, is as red, if not redder, than Pluto.

...
The data confirms that on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons will be looking at one of the ancient building blocks of the planets.”

...

“If there are clouds, it would mean the weather on Pluto is even more complex than we imagined,”

coylemj

The New Horizons probe which passed Pluto in 2015 is scheduled to swing by KBO object 2014 MU69, on Jan 1st, 2019.

The same object (now nicknamed Ultima Thule) occulted a star on August 4th, an event which, if observed from several locations, could assist in identifying the size and shape of the object. The occultation was due to be visible in a 30 kms wide corridor which stretched across Senegal in West Africa so NASA sent a team to observe the event.....

New Horizons scientists observe stellar occultation by Ultima Thule

New Horizons Team Aims to Get One Last Look at Flyby Target

New Horizons Team Successfully Observes New Stellar Occultation of Ultima Thule

star gazer

It's looking good for the first of January coming. Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) is where it was expected to be. Also New Horizons has the record for the most distant image from the Sun though I think the "Pale Blue Dot" image will always be something special with deep meaning for our planet and how we see it.

nasa

Mission team members were thrilled – if not a little surprised – that New Horizons’ telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was able to see the small, dim object while still more than 100 million miles away, and against a dense background of stars. Taken Aug. 16 and transmitted home through NASA’s Deep Space Network over the following days, the set of 48 images marked the team’s first attempt to find Ultima with the spacecraft's own cameras.
...
The Ultima flyby will be the first-ever close-up exploration of a small Kuiper Belt object and the farthest exploration of any planetary body in history, shattering the record New Horizons itself set at Pluto in July 2015 by about 1 billion miles. These images are also the most distant from the Sun ever taken, breaking the record set by Voyager 1’s “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth taken in 1990. (New Horizons set the record for the most distant image from Earth in December 2017.)
...

nasa video that begins with a segment on New Horizons:
https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1035695703182516224

Capt'n Midnight

Its not the only probe to spot it's target, and new years day will be busy for both.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/08/29/two-nasa-probes-catch-first-glimpses-of-primordial-targets/

On Aug. 17, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft obtained the first images of its target asteroid Bennu from a distance of 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km),
...
Bennu’s gravity will ensnare OSIRIS-REx into orbit Dec. 31, and the asteroid will become the smallest planetary body ever orbited by a spacecraft.
...
The high-speed flyby with Ultima Thule, scheduled for 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on New Year’s Day,

irishgeo

i wiash nasa would make some follow doucmentaries about what they actaully discovered from some of these missions. not just the early stuff like the first pictures of pluto etc. why not make something like new horizons what we learned about 5 years after or when the mission is complete. i know new horizons isn't finished yet but we dont have a cluse what they found out about the data from pluto.

ps200306

You could try searching for academic articles on Google Scholar or, since many of those will be behind paywalls, look for pre-prints on arxiv.org. Some results might be jargonistic but there can also be summary articles that are quite accessible. Here's a search for 'Pluto New Horizons' on arxiv, and the top result is The Pluto System After New Horizons by Stern et al. Guaranteed to be more informative than any dumbed down TV documentary, and also a Google image search will get you all the available pics without the cheesy animations. If you want to go into more depth there's enough on arxiv to keep you going for weeks.

Capt'n Midnight

In the meantime
Pluto a Planet? New Research from UCF Suggests Yes

Rubecula

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In the meantime
Pluto a Planet? New Research from UCF Suggests Yes

I don't care really Pluto is there and that is all that matters to me, I know it is possibly important to many folks but really, I just do not care what it is called a rose by any other name ….. Shakespeare.

Curly Judge

Less than 60 hours to go now to flypast of Ultima Thule.
Nice New Years present from NASA.

JupiterKid

Here’s an artist’s rendition of the flyby. We’ll know what Ultima Thule really looks like in less than 60 hours!

Capt'n Midnight

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/804/new-horizons-spacecraft-homing-in-on-kuiper-belt-target/

Flyby at 5:35 GMT but we'll have to wait till later for the downloads. And it'll be dial up speeds, the very early dial up speeds of 1 Kbs

refusetolose

looks like job done
just gotta wait for downloads now

Standard Toaster

Let's just hope the cap wasn't left on the camera lens

When can we expect the first images? (GMT)

ads20101

Hopefully we'll get some better resolution in the next few hours

JupiterKid

Looks like a successful flyby. The hi-res images of Ultima Thule will be fascinating.