New Horizons Mission - Pluto + Charon Encounter

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Pluto Global Color Map

 

Quote

This new, detailed global mosaic color map of Pluto is based on a series of three color filter images obtained by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera aboard New Horizons during the NASA spacecraft's close flyby of Pluto in July 2015.

 

The mosaic shows how Pluto's large-scale color patterns extend beyond the hemisphere facing New Horizons at closest approach, which were imaged at the highest resolution.

 

North is up; Pluto's equator roughly bisects the band of dark red terrains running across the lower third of the map. Pluto's giant, informally named Sputnik Planitia glacier - the left half of Pluto's signature "heart" feature - is at the center of this map.

Image courtesy NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. 

 

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Pluto_Global_Color_Map_999.html

 

5926 x 2963 image link of above

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Lowell Observatory to renovate Pluto discovery telescope

 

The Pluto Telescope is technically known as an astrograph, a telescope specifically designed for taking photographs of objects in space.

 

Quote

The instrument at Lowell Observatory used by Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto will soon undergo renovation. The year-long project, set to begin on January 12, will include restoration of both the historic telescope and the wooden dome that houses it. While the telescope will be removed from the dome during this work, the dome will be open from time to time for public tours as work allows.

 

The Pluto Telescope and its dome date back to the late 1920s, when Lowell Observatory recommenced the search for founder Percival Lowell's theoretical "Planet X". In the nine decades since, some areas of the dome have rotted, a few of the telescope parts have worn out, and the others need to be cleaned or stripped and repainted.

 

The renovation will address these issues, as Lowell's technical staff plans to replace part of the dome wood and then weatherproof the entire facility. They will also repair and clean the telescope control mechanisms, photographic plate holders, and other accessories. Lowell staff will also add new educational exhibits to the dome.

 

The Pluto Telescope is technically known as an astrograph, a telescope specifically designed for taking photographs of objects in space. In addition to Tombaugh's 1930 discovery of Pluto, the instrument was also used by Lowell astronomers to study comets and asteroids, as well as stars with measurable proper motion (apparent angular movement).

 

But it is the Pluto discovery that continues to generate public interest in the facility, resulting in ever-increasing visitation from guests around the world. In 2016 alone, Lowell welcomed a record 100,000 visitors.

more at the link...

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Lowell_Observatory_to_renovate_Pluto_discovery_telescope_999.html

 

[Unobscured Vision]

Nice. Wouldn't it be neat if they could build a new telescope in its' place that featured state-of-the-art technology that really pushed the envelope of what a 24-inch telescope could do? I know it would require quite a lot of funding ... but with the technology nowadays it could do things that Palomar (the "big" scope, back then) could only accomplish and with a lot better sharpness thanks to Adaptive Optics and some Post-Processing of the images. There's stuff we can do now that they never would have thought to do then, nor had the technology to do.

 

If only ...  

[Draggendrop Veteran]

19 hours ago, Unobscured Vision said:

Nice. Wouldn't it be neat if they could build a new telescope in its' place that featured state-of-the-art technology that really pushed the envelope of what a 24-inch telescope could do? I know it would require quite a lot of funding ... but with the technology nowadays it could do things that Palomar (the "big" scope, back then) could only accomplish and with a lot better sharpness thanks to Adaptive Optics and some Post-Processing of the images. There's stuff we can do now that they never would have thought to do then, nor had the technology to do.

 

If only ...  

I am happy with their decision because it preserves a bit of history, one in which we can walk into the actual observatory. Now imagine from that time, to have an old radio on with the first world series broadcast or Babe Ruth hitting 60 HR's, a flyer on a table with the first mass produced Model T, a newspaper opened with articles on Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart or the League of Nations/ Treaty of Versailles issues. A gramophone in the corner with the first jazz. These were wild times with a depression lurking over the horizon and of course the market crash.

 

I like the idea of the preservation of this time, but that is just a personal opinion.

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

This one made my day......

 

 

 

 

 

------------------------------

 

Did Pluto's Weird Red Spots Result from Crash That Spawned Charon?

 

The dark spots of Pluto's Cthulhu region are clearly visible (dark band at lower left) in this image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made a historic first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet in July 2015.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

 

Quote

Mysterious dark reddish spots along Pluto's equator may be the aftermath of the giant impact that helped form the dwarf planet's largest moon Charon, a new study finds.

 

This finding could also help explain the strangely wide variety of colors seen in distant objects in the solar system's Kuiper belt, researchers say.

 

One of the most striking features of Pluto that NASA's New Horizons probe photographed during its July 2015 flyby is the dark reddish material found in giant spots along the dwarf planet's equator. The biggest example of these patches is the region informally known as Cthulhu (pronounced "k-thu-lu"), which stretches nearly halfway around Pluto's equator. [See more amazing Pluto photos by New Horizons]

 

Cthulhu, named after the monstrous fictional deity from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, is about 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) long and 450 miles (750 km) wide, and with a size of more than 700,000 square miles (1.8 million square km), Cthulhu is larger than Alaska.

 

These dark reddish spots may contain organic matter — specifically, tar-like materials known as tholins. It remains uncertain how these patches were created. While comets might have scattered tholins onto Pluto's surface, or light or high-energy radiation could have chemically reacted with the dwarf planet's surface to create these compounds, both of these activities would have darkened the dwarf planet's surface. That, however, is not consistent with the presence of bright water-ice bedrock seen there.

 

The Cthulhu region of Pluto is seen in this annotated view of the informally named regions of Pluto christened by scientists with NASA's New Horizons mission.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

 

Quote

Now, researchers in Japan suggest this dark reddish material was created by the giant collision that may have given birth to Charon. Just as Earth's moon likely arose from the debris of a Mars-size body's crash into the newborn Earth, so has previous work proposed that Charon was the result of a cosmic impact.

 

The scientists said that both Pluto and whatever struck it likely contained simple organic compounds typically found in comets, such as formaldehyde. They also reasoned that these molecules may have made their way into temporary pools of warm liquid water that would likely have existed after the impact melted a significant part of Pluto's surface.

 

In lab experiments, the researchers heated soups of water and simple organic compounds such as formaldehyde for many hours. The concentrations of the organic molecules in these solutions were comparable to those found in comets.

 

The scientists found these soups became darker and redder over time as complex organic compounds formed. After heating for more than 1,000 hours at 122 degrees F (50 degrees Celsius) or greater, they resembled the material in Pluto's mysterious equatorial dark spots.

more at the link...

http://www.space.com/35501-pluto-red-spots-charon-moon-collision.html

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

bits and bytes...

 

 

 

A GEOPHYSICAL PLANET DEFINITION

 

Paper, 2 page pdf

 

This is a "paper", 2 page, submitted for the Lunar and Planetary Science XLVIII (2017) volume.

 

Due to the public's dislike of planet classification, a new definition is presented for review, and at the same time, shows the flaws of the IAU 2006 re-classification. 

 

Quick read and easy on the eyes.

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

New Horizons Exits Brief Safe Mode, Recovery Operations Continue

 

Quote

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is operating normally after just over 24 hours in a protective “safe mode,” the result of a command-loading error that occurred early Thursday. The spacecraft is designed to automatically transition to safe mode under certain anomalous conditions to protect itself from harm. In safe mode, the spacecraft suspends its timeline of activities and keeps its antenna pointed toward Earth to listen for instructions from the Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

 

Artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, en route to a January 2019 encounter with Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

 

Quote

“Our rapid recovery was supported by other NASA missions that provided New Horizons with some of their valuable Deep Space Network [DSN] antenna time,” said Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at APL. “This is the norm for missions using the DSN – we support one another when challenges arise.”  

 

New Horizons is healthy and continues to speed along toward its next target – the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 – while its operations team works to restore it to full operations and resume scientific data collection. Due to the 10.5-hour round trip communications delay that results from operating a spacecraft more than 3.5 billion miles (5.7 billion kilometers) from Earth, the team expects New Horizons to be back on its activities timeline early Sunday, Feb. 12.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-exits-brief-safe-mode-recovery-operations-continue

[Unobscured Vision]

Oh good. Glad it wasn't anything serious.

[Draggendrop Veteran]

 

 

New Horizons posters, studies, to be presented at Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

 

Zooming in on Pluto’s pattern of pits, as seen by New Horizons. Image Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI
 

 

Quote

Seven poster sessions and seven studies based on data returned by the New Horizons mission will be presented at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which will be held in The Woodlands, Texas, on March 20–24 of this year (2017).

 

Centered on Pluto and its moons, the Kuiper Belt, and KBOs, the 14 presentations are humorously titled New Horizons Views of Pluto and Charon: So Long, and Thanks for All the Bits.

 

The posters will be displayed on Tuesday, March 21, at 5:30 p.m. CDT in the Town Center Exhibit Arena, while the papers will be presented on Wednesday, March 22, between 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. CDT in the Montgomery Ballroom.

 

William McKinnon and Adrienn Luspay-Kuti are chairing the paper presentation event.

 

Data from NASA’s New Horizons mission indicates that at least two (and possibly all four) of Pluto’s small moons may be the result of mergers between still smaller moons. If this discovery is borne out by further analysis, it could provide important new clues to the formation of the Pluto system. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI
 

 

This annotated version (enhanced) includes an inset diagram showing Charon’s north pole, equator, and central meridian, with the features highlighted. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI
 

 

Posters and papers are listed at the link...

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/solar-system/new-horizons-posters-studies-presented-lunar-and-planetary-science-conference/

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

The International Astronomical Union has officially approved the naming of fourteen features on Pluto.

 

 

• Tombaugh Regio honors Clyde Tombaugh (1906–1997), the U.S. astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930 from Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
   
• Burney crater honors Venetia Burney (1918–2009), who as an 11-year-old schoolgirl suggested the name “Pluto” for Clyde Tombaugh’s newly discovered planet. Later in life she taught mathematics and economics.
   
• Sputnik Planitia is a large plain named after Sputnik 1, the first space satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.
   
• Tenzing Montes and Hillary Montes are mountain ranges honoring Tenzing Norgay (1914–1986) and Sir Edmund Hillary (1919–2008), the Indian/Nepali Sherpa and New Zealand mountaineer who were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return safely.
   
• Al-Idrisi Montes honours Ash-Sharif al-Idrisi (1100–1165/66), a noted Arab mapmaker and geographer whose landmark work of medieval geography is sometimes translated as “The Pleasure of Him Who Longs to Cross the Horizons.”
   
• Djanggawul Fossae defines a network of long, narrow depressions named for the Djanggawuls, three ancestral beings in indigenous Australian mythology who traveled between the island of the dead and Australia, creating the landscape and filling it with vegetation.
   
• Sleipnir Fossa is named for the powerful, eight-legged horse of Norse mythology that carried the god Odin into the underworld.
   
• Virgil Fossae honors Virgil, one of the greatest Roman poets and Dante’s fictional guide through hell and purgatory in the Divine Comedy.
   
• Adlivun Cavus is a deep depression named for Adlivun, the underworld in Inuit mythology.
   
• Hayabusa Terra is a large land mass saluting the Japanese spacecraft and mission (2003–2010) that returned the first asteroid sample.
   
• Voyager Terra honors the pair of NASA spacecraft, launched in 1977, that performed the first “grand tour” of all four giant planets. The Voyager spacecraft are now probing the boundary between the Sun and interstellar space.
   
• Tartarus Dorsa is a ridge named for Tartarus, the deepest, darkest pit of the underworld in Greek mythology.
   
• Elliot crater recognizes James Elliot (1943–2011), an MIT researcher who pioneered the use of stellar occultations to study the Solar System — leading to discoveries such as the rings of Uranus and the first detection of Pluto's thin atmosphere.

Full article at the IAU

____________

 

Another big milestone reported yesterday regarding New Horizons and MU69.

Quote

New Horizons Files Flight Plan for 2019 Flyby

 

NASA’s New Horizons mission has set the distance for its New Year’s Day 2019 flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, aiming to come three times closer to MU69 than it famously flew past Pluto in 2015.

 

That milestone will mark the farthest planetary encounter in history – some one billion miles (1.5 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. If all goes as planned, New Horizons will come to within just 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) of MU69 at closest approach, peering down on it from celestial north. The alternate plan, to be employed in certain contingency situations such as the discovery of debris near MU69, would take New Horizons within 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers)— still closer than the 7,800-mile (12,500-kilometer) flyby distance to Pluto.

 

“I couldn’t be more excited about this encore performance from New Horizons,” said NASA Planetary Science Director Jim Green at Headquarters in Washington. “This mission keeps pushing the limits of what’s possible, and I’m looking forward to the images and data of the most distant object any spacecraft has ever explored.”  

 

If the closer approach is executed, the highest-resolution camera on New Horizons, the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) should be able to spot details as small as 230 feet (70 meters) across, for example, compared to nearly 600 feet (183 meters) on Pluto.

 

“We’re planning to fly closer to MU69 than Pluto to get even higher resolution imagery and other datasets,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado. “The science should be spectacular.”

 

The team weighed numerous factors in making its choice, said science team member and flyby planning lead John Spencer, also of SwRI. “The considerations included what is known about MU69’s size, shape  and the likelihood of hazards near it, the challenges of navigating close to MU69 while obtaining sharp and well-exposed images, and other spacecraft resources and capabilities,” he said.

 

Using all seven onboard science instruments, New Horizons will obtain extensive geological, geophysical, compositional, and other data on MU69; it will also search for an atmosphere and moons.

 

“Reaching 2014 MU69, and seeing it as an actual new world, will be another historic exploration achievement,” said Helene Winters, the New Horizons project manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.  “We are truly going where no one has gone before. Our whole team is excited about the challenges and opportunities of a voyage to this faraway frontier.”

 

How do we know what we know about 2014 MU69? Read about the New Horizons KBO Chasers and the work to observe this distant Kuiper Belt object from Earth.

 

NASA

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Quote

New Horizons Corrects Its Course in the Kuiper Belt

 

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft carried out a short, 2.5-minute engine burn on Saturday, Dec. 9 that refined its course toward 2014 MU69, the ancient Kuiper Belt object it will fly by a little more than a year from now.

 

Setting a record for the farthest spacecraft course correction to date, the engine burn also adjusted the arrival time at MU69 to optimize flyby science.

 

Telemetry confirming that the maneuver went as planned reached the New Horizons mission operations center around 1 p.m. EST at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, via NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) stations in Goldstone, California. The radio signals carrying the data traveled over 3.8 billion miles (6.1 billion kilometers) and took five hours and 41 minutes to reach Earth at the speed of light.

 

Operating by timed commands stored on its computer, New Horizons fired its thrusters for 152 seconds, adjusting its velocity by about 151 centimeters per second, a little more than three miles per hour. The maneuver both refined the course toward and optimized the flyby arrival time at MU69, by setting closest approach to 12:33 a.m. EST (5:33 UTC) on Jan. 1, 2019. The prime flyby distance is set at 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers); the timing provides better visibility for DSN's powerful antennas to reflect radar waves off the surface of MU69 for New Horizons to receive – a difficult experiment that, if it succeeds, will help scientists determine the reflectivity and roughness of MU69's surface.

//

 

Full article at John Hopkins APL

 

 

Just a little over a year away before the MU69 flyby.  Seems just like yesterday it was taking pictures of Pluto.

[DocM]

That should be an interesting flyby, can't wait to see the images. 

[Unobscured Vision]

^^^  They'll be a thing of beauty. I don't think that we'll be bored at all.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Time to wipe the dust off this thread.  10 days away from the flyby of Ultima Thule.

 

 

 

From the link in the above article...

Quote

 

The PI’s Perspective: On Final Approach to Ultima

 

The New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and on final approach to explore Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt. On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, New Horizons will swoop three times closer to “Ultima” than we flew past Pluto!

 

On Saturday, Dec. 15, the New Horizons hazard watch team concluded its work, having found no moons or rings in the path of New Horizons on its planned closest approach to Ultima. With that information and a unanimous finding by our mission stakeholders team, I informed NASA that we are “go” to fly by Ultima on the trajectory that yields the best science. As a result, New Horizons will approach to within 3,500 kilometers (about 2,200 miles) of Ultima early on New Year’s Day. There is no longer any chance we will divert to a farther flyby distance with consequently lower-resolution images.

 

Just yesterday, New Horizons conducted another small trajectory correction engine burn to help us home in on Ultima. That 0.26 meter/second burn lasted only 27 seconds and was executed perfectly by the spacecraft, cancelling about 300 kilometers (180 miles) of estimated targeting error and speeding up our arrival time by about five seconds. We will continue to track and target the spacecraft toward our expected arrival location and time. If needed, we can transmit files to New Horizons as late as the day before arrival to correct for any offsets from our flyby design, but we cannot burn the engines any longer. This is because New Horizons will soon enter Encounter Mode, which does not allow for engine burns.

 

Encounter Mode (or EM) is designed to ensure the flyby science even if the spacecraft malfunctions. Normally, if New Horizons develops problems in flight – which is very rare – the bird halts its flight plan and calls Earth for instructions. But if that were to happen during flyby closest approach, we’d likely miss getting the goods on Ultima before our mission control on Earth could intercede. After all, the round-trip communications time from Ultima to Earth and back is now over 12 hours.

 

/snip

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

This article will bring everyone up to speed...

 

On eve of New Horizons flyby, Ultima Thule still holding onto its mysteries

December 30th, 2018

 

Long article but packed with info...

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/30/on-eve-of-new-horizons-flyby-ultima-thule-still-holding-onto-its-mysteries/

 

 

The Kuiper Belt lies in the so-called “third zone” of our solar system, beyond the terrestrial planets (inner zone) and gas giants (middle zone). This vast region contains billions of objects, including comets, dwarf planets like Pluto and “planetesimals” like Ultima Thule. The objects in this region are believed to be frozen in time — relics left over from the formation of the solar system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

 

This image shows the first detection of 2014 MU69 (nicknamed “Ultima Thule”), using the highest resolution mode (known as “1×1”) of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. Three separate images, each with an exposure time of 0.5 seconds, were combined to produce the image shown here. All three images were taken on Dec. 24, 2018. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

 

----------------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons

 

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

 

Media Briefings, Online Coverage of New Horizons' Ultima Thule Flyby

Schedule of events...

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

 

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

It's been a busy day.

 

I'll throw some tweets around for generalities...and we should be receiving proper update articles in a few days...along with images...eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quote

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 9:45 a.m.:  New Horizons Signal Acquisition from Ultima Thule Flyby (All Channels)

11:30 a.m.: New Horizons Post-Flyby Press Conference

 

Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2 p.m.: New Horizons press briefing on science results from Ultima Thule.

 

Thursday, Jan. 3, 2 p.m.: New Horizons press briefing on science results from Ultima Thule.

These will on...

Official Live Stream of NASA TV

[Unobscured Vision]

The JHU stream earlier. Worth a watch.  

 

Citations: JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute, NASA Ames Research Center.
Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZnFiN1cXS0

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Not only the most distant object imaged during a flyby...but also the first contact binary object ever explored by a spacecraft.

 

Ultima Thule is a beaut...

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Thank's for updating this @Unobscured Vision and @Jim K . I opted for an earlier surgery date today...and am a bit rough...for a few days.

 

 

 

and of course...kind of looks like...

 

 

😎

[Unobscured Vision]

@Draggendrop hang in there boss. Hope ya feel better.  

[DocM]

6 hours ago, Jim K said:

Not only the most distant object imaged during a flyby...but also the first contact binary object ever explored by a spacecraft.

>

 

 Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a contact binary with origins in the Kuiper belt. Explored by Rosetta and the Philae lander. 

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

50 minutes ago, DocM said:

 

 Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a contact binary with origins in the Kuiper belt. Explored by Rosetta and the Philae lander. 

 

There is dispute among scientists if Ultima Thule is the first contact binary ... guess I should have placed an asterisk mark.  Itokawa, visited by Hayabusa, might even be a contact binary (mission predates Rosetta).  Not sure if 67P has been scientifically confirmed as a contact binary either.  Ultima Thule, without question, is one.

 

Have you attempted to correct NASA and Alan Stern (New Horizons principle investigator)?

 

 

 

Just curious?

[DocM]

27 minutes ago, Jim K said:

Have you attempted to correct NASA and Alan Stern (New Horizons principle investigator) as well?

 

Just curious?

 

By Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument team. 

 

https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.07021

 

Quote

We argue that the two lobes of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko nucleus are derived from two distinct objects that have formed a contact binary via a gentle merger.