NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
Robotic Spacecraft (Astronomy, Planetary, Earth, Solar/Heliophysics) => Space Science Coverage => Topic started by: Chris Bergin on 07/12/2015 08:11 pm
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Live Update Thread for the historic flyby of Pluto by New Horizons. This thread will be moved (with a placeholder here) to the Live Events section on Tuesday.
Feature Article for the event - by Chris Gebhardt:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/new-horizons-pluto-historic-kuiper-encounter/
New Horizons News Articles:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/?s=New+Horizons
General Master Threads (through the past number of years):
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=4221.0 - Updates since 2006.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36599.0 - Includes most recent milestones and discussion.
Party Thread:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=38015.0
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Moved for live coverage tomorrow! Let's grab every screenshot we can, as this is a once in a lifetime event folks!
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This may have been linked to earlier... But this just gives me goose bumps!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aky9FFj4ybE
The real thing looks like it could be even more surprising! :)
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New Horizons Mission Update - July 13, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSGTbS3xuQ
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Current status - New Horizons pointed at Earth (downloading data).
Keith
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The 70m DSN antenna at Madrid is ready to pick up New Horizons' signal
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
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Transmission completed, back to science, Madrid waiting for down link.
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12 hours to closest approach.
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New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern receiving a standing ovation at APL this afternoon.
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Here's a schedule of when we can expect to receive images and data from New Horizons as well as a good list of places to check for the most up to date news courtesy of Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html
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This may have been linked to earlier... But this just gives me goose bumps!
[youtube]aky9FFj4ybE[/youtube]
The real thing looks like it could be even more surprising! :)
That's an outstanding video, but it really should begin with Russia's Luna 1 flyby of the Moon in 1959. That marked the true beginning of mankind's exploration of the solar system beyond Earth. (Both the US and the USSR had three failed attempts during 1958, with the first one on August 17. That was the very first attempt to launch a rocket to the Moon, and it deserves to be remembered.)
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Getting oh so close...
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php
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Less than 10 hours:
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They updated that video with a new "Extended Version":
New Horizons - [Extended Version]
Published on Jun 30, 2015
Ready to explore Pluto? NASA’s New Horizons - the fastest spacecraft ever created - will speed past Pluto on July 14, 2015, beaming back high resolution photos (and invaluable data) of the dwarf planet’s surface for the first time in human history.
https://youtu.be/-Hbp8QYUQpc
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You know it's New Horizons' time to shine when four DSN antennas are ready to receive its bounty of data
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
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ALICE Scanning time
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Goldstone is where the New Horizons party's at...
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
EDIT: Canberra just crashed the party right after I posted this
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6.5 hours and 206,155 miles and closing! Off to bed now.
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I've combined the EYES, DSN, & latest data into a live stream if anyone wants to check it out.
http://twitch.tv/Astro_Zach
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Sorry-- Had to post this screenshot showing SEVEN DSN antennas devoted to New Horizons... NOW I'm off to bed.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
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This is a photo of an artists impression signed by Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh many years ago.
I obtained this just after his late wife Dorothy had put it into a basket in an antiques shop at Las Cruces, NM - where they lived for a while - back in 2000.
Phill Parker
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Targeting Nix
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Now on to Hydra
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-4 hours and counting!
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Targeting Pluto
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Steady with LORRI.
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Targeting Charon
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-3 hours and counting
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The Data stream is live again.
http://twitch.tv/Astro_Zach
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Targeting Pluto with Rex
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Targeting Nix
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Targeting Charon
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Targeting Pluto
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-2 hours and counting
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Targeting Nix
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Targeting Pluto
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Now below 90,000KM to Pluto.
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- 90min and counting
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Targeting Charon
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I can see the stars moving on the background in relation to the spacecraft!
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1 hour until closest approach!
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In the sim, it states that Pluto is the target. On the instrument view, none of the instruments have the planet in view.
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T-1 hour until closest approach
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-1 hour and counting
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TARGET: PLUTO
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NASA TV Coverage shortly!
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Although right now it's just Charlie Bolden chuckling to himself about something and then told he's got a live mic. Whoops.
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50 minutes
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Here we go now, below 50,000KM to go.
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T-45 minutes and counting
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No DSN connection for now.
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NASA TV are really making a mess of this. More open mic nonsense.
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40 minutes
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T-40 minutes
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NASA TV are really making a mess of this. More open mic nonsense.
This sounds like practise to me..
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Gimballing to target Nix.
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Nix
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Targeting Nix
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https://instagram.com/p/5HTXKMoaFL/
"SNEAK PEAK of gorgeous Pluto!"
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Targeting Nix T-33
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Now targeting Pluto Barycenter
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T-30 minutes and counting
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Target: Pluto
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T-25 minutes and counting
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Finally!
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Why did it target the barycentre?
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20 minutes
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T-20 minutes and counting. Looking good for a possibility of an image with Charon near the limb of Pluto
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Like a TV advert. Pretty lady going to Pluto event ;D
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"It's game time" ;D
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T-15 minutes and counting
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This is pretty funny. Lots off fluff and then they go to mission control and it's cleaner with a vacuum.
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15 minutes (or 14m, 60s here) and nearing 10,000 miles out.
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Commander Kelly.
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People talking over each other.
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Less than 10,000 miles.
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Scott Kelly with his "My other vehicle is on its way to Pluto" bumper sticker.
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ISS- Scott Kelly “My other vehicle is on its way to Pluto”... ;D
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Looks like the last image of Pluto to get the entire thing in the field of view occurred about 15k miles out, while the most detailed partial images are being taken now between 10k and 8k out.
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passing through the plane of the Plutonian system
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Thanks for the updates my friends. After cringing at the beginning of the NASA TV feed I turned it off. What an awful introduction to such an historic event, it seemed geared to 8th graders not adults.
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10 mins.
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10 minutes
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T-10 minutes and counting
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late to the party, need a link to the live coverage please.
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nasa tv http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html#.VaTxR2ZVikp
late to the party, need a link to the live coverage please.
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late to the party, need a link to the live coverage please.
Always one person per live thread isn't there. ;)
http://www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV
It's a shambles of coverage, however.
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5 minutes now.
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5 minutes, imagine the images it's getting now.
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-5 minutes
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Slow high res passes across the center of Pluto occurring now. Closest approach time is here.
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"People are. I'm excited. And. Yeah - people are crying. I see mothers. Yeah, back to you".
*Shrugs*
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-3 minn
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Most detailed observation sweep of Charon occurring now.
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-3
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Just passed 8000 miles!! Incredible!
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2 minutes
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"People are definitely still talking about it on facebook and myspace"
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-90 seconds!!!
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During closest approach they're looking at Charon, interesting...
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60 seconds.
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30 sec, imaging Charon.
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Lots of chants with: USA, USA, USA
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And that was closest approach!!! Unfortunately other things are making the news today so it won't be as high as it should!
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There she goes! My answer to 'where were you when'.
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0 seconds!! (well, .5 seconds)
Welcome to Pluto..and Farewell to Pluto....
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changing to Pluto real fast, Reoriating antenna?
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Well there you go closest approach has passed.
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a really quick scan of Pluto
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New Horizons' position as of 7:37 AM, EDT. Sorry for the slow response
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Looks to be targeting the other small satellites now.
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Rex (indeed)
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Rex is at work.
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+ 5 minutes
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+8 minutes. Hope they get an image of crescent Pluto but it doesn't look like it is pointing at that.
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+8 minutes. Hope they get an image of crescent Pluto but it doesn't look like it is pointing at that.
That's happening now. Starting another long slow pan of the image cameras across Pluto.
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10,000 miles away. Seems like only an hour ago that it was 10,000 miles to.
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Set it up to look back home.....
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Plus 15 min, scanning the edge.
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Think this is new
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589
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Think this is new
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=38016.msg1404146#msg1404146
And that's still not the full resolution version of that image, just appears ot be the Instagram image magnified. The full res is supposed to be released shortly and it will be discussed in the press conference.
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Earth in the lower right.
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Hydra sure has a strange orbit.
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Pluto receding. Now we just have to wait 4 hours to see some results!!!
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REX is now getting in position for the occultation measurements. It will remain in this configuration until then. The occultation of Pluto with the Sun/Earth will occur in about 30 min starting around 8:45 ET.
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Edit :)
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Target Earth. Smile everybody!
:D
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Target: EARTH!
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Bring home the data baby!
Nope, it is not sending data. It is setting up to receive the DSN signals from Earth to begin the occultation measurements.
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Bring home the data baby!
Nope, it is not sending data. It is setting up to receive the DSN signals from Earth to begin the occultation measurements.
Ofcourse.. your correct. but.. All the excitement! :D :D
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Target Earth. Smile everybody!
:D
*Spoilsport alert* ;D
Doug Ellison @doug_ellison 2m2 minutes ago
@NASASpaceflight Too late - you needed to wave 4.5hrs ago :-)
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Technical explanation of the radio occultation experiment: https://books.google.it/books?id=oZfpYIUKDrUC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=earth+occultation+new+horizons+radio&source=bl&ots=xu5-CeeM4t&sig=ymDS-ldHIE1KQzsQS_Sl1GD45VQ&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0CD0Q6AEwA2oVChMIq-3Emc7axgIVRB0-Ch2s1wVa#v=onepage&q=earth%20occultation%20new%20horizons%20radio&f=false
A powerful signal sent from Goldstone and Canberra's DSN stations 4 hours ago is now being recieved by NH and it will check how it's distorted by Pluto and its atmosphere.
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Wish NH could burp a brief acknowledgement of its status at this point, so we know it's still alive and on-script.
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Target Earth. Smile everybody!
:D
*Spoilsport alert* ;D
Doug Ellison @doug_ellison 2m2 minutes ago
@NASASpaceflight Too late - you needed to wave 4.5hrs ago :-)
Drat, I was in bed.
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Very in-depth response from Alan Stern about RTGs and how long it'll last on New Horizons (will run out of power by mid-2030s)
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Wish NH could burp a brief acknowledgement of its status at this point, so we know it's still alive and on-script.
According to the timeline, linked early in the thread, I think it does.
Won't be received until around 01:00 UTC tomorrow, though.
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Wish NH could burp a brief acknowledgement of its status at this point, so we know it's still alive and on-script.
It will start transmitting data only tonight 20:27 UTC; signal will reach Earth around 01:00 tomorrow.
20.27.00 Signal Has Left New Horizons that it crossed through the Pluto System
20.52.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Neptune's Orbit
22.15.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Uranus' Orbit
23.38.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Saturn's Orbit
0.16.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Jupiter's Orbit
0.49.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Mars' Orbit
0.53.00 New Horizons' Status Beacon Crossed Moon's Orbit
0.53.00 New Horizons' Encounter Status Beacon (called EHEALTH2) expected at Earth about now
0.53.00 PHONE HOME
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Flyby.php (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Flyby.php)
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Occultation drawing near
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Occultation of sun begins. First ever human-made object to be in pluto's shadow. Sunrise soon. Then another sunset and sunrise from charon. That occultation will be the last time a shadow ever falls on New Horizons.
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Plus 1 hour.
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Very informational pers conference, have to watch it again to get it all :)
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Here comes the sun...
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Very informational pers conference, have to watch it again to get it all :)
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Bowman: We were 72 seconds early. Stern: Our nav predicts came out to 70 km closer to Pluto than aimpoint. Well within spec.
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NASA News Briefing on New Horizon Mission
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9506
New Horizons Mission Celebration – Arrival at Pluto
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9505
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:))
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Plus 2 hours.
Edit - sorry, plus 1 hour 59 minutes, 60.0 seconds. Hm.
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Planned high-res images ( http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Flyby.php ):
Pluto:
N. of images, Resolution (km/pixel)
15 0.410
23 0.280
70 0.150
130 0.120
60 0.076
Charon:
N. of images, resolution
6 0.71
12 0.44
67 0.17
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Better than 1 km/pixel images
Pluto (LORRI)
July 14 04:13:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 179248.28 km away at est. resolution 0.89 km/pix.
July 14 04:14:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 178588.97 km away at est. resolution 0.89 km/pix.
July 14 04:15:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 177929.68 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:16:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 177270.40 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:17:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 176611.14 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:17:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 175951.89 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:18:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 175292.66 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:19:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 174633.44 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:20:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 173974.24 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:21:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 173315.06 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:21:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 172655.89 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:22:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 171996.74 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:23:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 171337.60 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:24:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 170678.48 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:25:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 170019.38 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:25:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 169360.30 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:26:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 168701.23 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:27:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 168042.18 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
July 14 04:28:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 167383.15 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
July 14 04:29:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 166724.13 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
uly 14 06:10:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 15 images of Pluto with LORRI from 83646.234 km away at est. resolution 0.41 km/pix.
July 14 06:43:00 EDT
New Horizons is taking 23 images of Pluto with LORRI from 56315.602 km away at est. resolution 0.28 km/pix.
July 14 07:17:48 EDT
New Horizons is taking 70 images of Pluto with LORRI from 30003.890 km away at est. resolution 0.15 km/pix.
July 14 07:26:28 EDT
New Horizons is taking 130 images of Pluto with LORRI from 23859.780 km away at est. resolution 0.12 km/pix.
July 14 07:58:30 EDT
New Horizons is taking 60 images of Pluto with LORRI from 15386.759 km away at est. resolution 0.076 km/pix.
July 14 11:04:08 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 160954.31 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 11:05:01 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 161681.58 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 11:05:54 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 162408.88 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:06:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 163136.20 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:07:40 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 163863.55 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:08:33 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 164590.92 km away at est. resolution 0.82 km/pix.
July 14 11:41:41 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 191887.68 km away at est. resolution 0.95 km/pix.
July 14 11:42:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 192684.40 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:43:37 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 193481.14 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:44:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 194277.90 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:45:33 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 195074.67 km away at est. resolution 0.97 km/pix.
July 14 11:46:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 195871.45 km away at est. resolution 0.97 km/pix.
Pluto (MVIC)
July 14 07:05:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC Color from 39384.908 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 07:20:16 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 28206.280 km away at est. resolution 0.56 km/pix.
July 14 07:31:05 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 20854.035 km away at est. resolution 0.41 km/pix.
July 14 07:50:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 13735.372 km away at est. resolution 0.27 km/pix.
July 14 08:00:41 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 16282.704 km away at est. resolution 0.32 km/pix.
July 14 08:08:13 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 20323.226 km away at est. resolution 0.40 km/pix.
Charon (LORRI)
July 14 04:32:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 178279.45 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:33:19 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 177623.82 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:34:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 176968.26 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:34:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 176312.76 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:35:43 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 175657.33 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:36:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 175001.97 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:37:19 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 174346.67 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:38:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 173691.45 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 05:14:42 EDT
New Horizons is taking 6 images of Charon with LORRI from 143819.25 km away at est. resolution 0.71 km/pix.
July 14 06:23:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 12 images of Charon with LORRI from 88389.251 km away at est. resolution 0.44 km/pix.
July 14 07:43:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 67 images of Charon with LORRI from 34200.236 km away at est. resolution 0.17 km/pix.
Charon (MVIC)
July 14 07:45:29 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Charon with MVIC from 33245.206 km away at est. resolution 0.66 km/pix.
Nix (LORRI)
July 14 04:05:11 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 156736.78 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 04:05:59 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 156083.94 km away at est. resolution 0.77 km/pix.
July 14 04:06:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 155431.16 km away at est. resolution 0.77 km/pix.
July 14 05:57:13 EDT
New Horizons is taking 13 images of Nix with LORRI from 66612.933 km away at est. resolution 0.33 km/pix.
July 14 10:55:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 184363.28 km away at est. resolution 0.91 km/pix.
July 14 10:56:17 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 185044.97 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.
July 14 10:57:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 185726.69 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.
July 14 10:57:57 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 186408.45 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.
Nix (MVIC)
July 14 07:14:32 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Nix with MVIC from 22235.744 km away at est. resolution 0.44 km/pix.
Hydra (LORRI)
July 14 10:44:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 156723.64 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:45:45 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 157326.38 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:46:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 157929.86 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:47:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 158534.08 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:48:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 159139.03 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:49:05 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 159744.70 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:49:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 160351.08 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:50:45 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 160958.17 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:51:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 161565.95 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:52:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 162174.42 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
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Remember to read the opening post in this thread. This is for updates. Discussion etc is taking place on other threads. Will trim to keep this on track. No massive emdded images either please.
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Hydra sure has a strange orbit.
I am almost 100% certain this is a bug. The real orbit must be very close to a usual ellipse.
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Hydra sure has a strange orbit.
I am almost 100% certain this is a bug. The real orbit must be very close to a usual ellipse.
Yeah, there's something just plain wrong with the Eyes software. It nearly crosses other orbits at times. It's really broken, and it bothers me deeply that they haven't fixed this - it's giving a huge number of people the wrong idea.
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July 14, 2015
RELEASE 15-149
NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto.
After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India – making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.
“I’m delighted at this latest accomplishment by NASA, another first that demonstrates once again how the United States leads the world in space,” said John Holdren, assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple missions orbiting and exploring the surface of Mars in advance of human visits still to come; the remarkable Kepler mission to identify Earth-like planets around stars other than our own; and the DSCOVR satellite that soon will be beaming back images of the whole Earth in near real-time from a vantage point a million miles away. As New Horizons completes its flyby of Pluto and continues deeper into the Kuiper Belt, NASA's multifaceted journey of discovery continues."
“The exploration of Pluto and its moons by New Horizons represents the capstone event to 50 years of planetary exploration by NASA and the United States," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “Once again we have achieved a historic first. The United States is the first nation to reach Pluto, and with this mission has completed the initial survey of our solar system, a remarkable accomplishment that no other nation can match.”
Per the plan, the spacecraft currently is in data-gathering mode and not in contact with flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physical Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Scientists are waiting to find out whether New Horizons “phones home,” transmitting to Earth a series of status updates that indicate the spacecraft survived the flyby and is in good health. The “call” is expected shortly after 9 p.m. tonight.
The Pluto story began only a generation ago when young Clyde Tombaugh was tasked to look for Planet X, theorized to exist beyond the orbit of Neptune. He discovered a faint point of light that we now see as a complex and fascinating world.
"Pluto was discovered just 85 years ago by a farmer's son from Kansas, inspired by a visionary from Boston, using a telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Today, science takes a great leap observing the Pluto system up close and flying into a new frontier that will help us better understand the origins of the solar system.”
New Horizons’ flyby of the dwarf planet and its five known moons is providing an up-close introduction to the solar system's Kuiper Belt, an outer region populated by icy objects ranging in size from boulders to dwarf planets. Kuiper Belt objects, such as Pluto, preserve evidence about the early formation of the solar system.
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, says the mission now is writing the textbook on Pluto.
"The New Horizons team is proud to have accomplished the first exploration of the Pluto system,” Stern said. “This mission has inspired people across the world with the excitement of exploration and what humankind can achieve.”
New Horizons’ almost 10-year, three-billion-mile journey to closest approach at Pluto took about one minute less than predicted when the craft was launched in January 2006. The spacecraft threaded the needle through a 36-by-57 mile (60 by 90 kilometers) window in space -- the equivalent of a commercial airliner arriving no more off target than the width of a tennis ball.
Because New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched – hurtling through the Pluto system at more than 30,000 mph, a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice could incapacitate the spacecraft. Once it reestablishes contact Tuesday night, it will take 16 months for New Horizons to send its cache of data – 10 years’ worth -- back to Earth.
New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple rovers exploring the surface of Mars, the Cassini spacecraft that has revolutionized our understanding of Saturn and the Hubble Space Telescope, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. All of this scientific research and discovery is helping to inform the agency’s plan to send American astronauts to Mars in the 2030’s.
“After nearly 15 years of planning, building, and flying the New Horizons spacecraft across the solar system, we’ve reached our goal,” said project manager Glen Fountain at APL “The bounty of what we’ve collected is about to unfold.”
APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Follow the New Horizons mission on Twitter and use the hashtag #PlutoFlyby to join the conversation. Live updates also will be available on the mission Facebook page.
For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
and
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/plutotoolkit.cfm
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Live event with Scott Kelly coming up.
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107,000 and cruisin, back to targeting Pluto.
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I noticed Google were joining in today (14 July) with their search box animation - see screenshot image.
Phill
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They're showing off the MVIC data now. via Emily Lakdawalla on twitter. Charon's pole apparently red due to Pluto's atmosphere "leaking" onto it...
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Took this a couple of hours ago. Alan Stern presenting photos of Pluto to Clyde Tombaugh's children. Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930.
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Pluto and Charon Shine in False Color (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-and-charon-shine-in-false-color)
New Horizons has obtained impressive new images of Pluto and its large moon Charon that highlight their compositional diversity. These are not actual color images of Pluto and Charon—they are shown here in exaggerated colors that make it easy to note the differences in surface material and features on each planetary body.
The images were obtained using three of the color filters of the “Ralph” instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT. New Horizons has seven science instruments on board the spacecraft—including “Ralph” and “Alice”, whose names are a throwback to the “Honeymooners,” a popular 1950s sitcom.
“These images show that Pluto and Charon are truly complex worlds. There's a whole lot going on here,” said New Horizons co-investigator Will Grundy, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. “Our surface composition team is working as fast as we can to identify the substances in different regions on Pluto and unravel the processes that put them where they are.”
The color data helps scientists understand the molecular make-up of ices on the surfaces of Pluto and Charon, as well as the age of geologic features such as craters. They can also tell us about surface changes caused by space “weather,” such as radiation.
The new color images reveal that the “heart” of Pluto actually consists of two remarkably different-colored regions. In the false-color image, the heart consists of a western lobe shaped like an ice cream cone that appears peach color in this image. A mottled area on the right (east) side looks bluish. A mid-latitude band appears in shades ranging from pale blue through red. Even within the northern polar cap, in the upper part of the image, various shades of yellow-orange indicate subtle compositional differences. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.
Charon is Just as Colorful
The surface of Charon is viewed using the same exaggerated color. The red on the dark northern polar cap of Charon is attributed to hydrocarbon and other molecules, a class of chemical compounds called tholins. The mottled colors at lower latitudes point to the diversity of terrains on Charon. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.
“We make these color images to highlight the variety of surface environments present in the Pluto system,” said Dennis Reuter, co-investigator with the New Horizons Composition Team. “They show us in an intuitive way that there is much still to learn from the data coming down.”
Due to the three-billion-mile distance to Pluto, data takes 4 ½ hours to come to Earth, even at the speed of light. It will take 16 months for all of New Horizons’ science data to be received, and the treasure trove from this mission will be studied for decades to come.
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In about 15 minutes, New Horizons will be sending out its "hello i am alive" signal, to arrive at earth ~4.5 hours later.
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Yeah, there's something just plain wrong with the Eyes software. It nearly crosses other orbits at times. It's really broken, and it bothers me deeply that they haven't fixed this - it's giving a huge number of people the wrong idea.
Comment from NASA eyes team on this https://twitter.com/nasa_eyes/status/620606468975366144
Its the resonance with Charon's orbital period. Ditto the others and their slight polygonal orbit shapes.
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Now transmitting the first data and images back to earth. Hope we hear it soon!
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Now transmitting the first data and images back to earth. Hope we hear it soon!
No images, only a 20 min burst of telemetry on spacecraft health.
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Now transmitting the first data and images back to earth. Hope we hear it soon!
No images, only a 20 min burst of telemetry on spacecraft health.
1.2megabits and no pictures? When do they start sending the flyby data?
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Now transmitting the first data and images back to earth. Hope we hear it soon!
In about 15 minutes, New Horizons will be sending out its "hello i am alive" signal, to arrive at earth ~4.5 hours later.
There's still a while to go, but the guys at the DSN really don't want to slew away from NH :D
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1.2megabits and no pictures? When do they start sending the flyby data?
Where ever did you pull 1.2 megabits from? It's more like 1000 bits/s, highest attainable rate 4000 bits/s. They're not wasting time downlinking images at that rate because there's still good science to be had at Pluto system.
I suggest everyone go and read Emily Lakdawalla's excellent writeup on what to expect and when: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html
For those of you who just can't be bothered...
Wednesday, July 15 at 10:59 UT / 06:59 ET / 03:59 PT: 1.5hr downlink: First Look A
LORRI Charon at 2.3 km/pix (~520 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-14 02:41:49. Range 466,000 km. - The best single-frame photo of Charon that will be available during encounter period
LORRI Pluto at 3.9 km/pix (~615 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 20:02:43. Range 778,000 km. - Will make a stereo view with the one downlinked in E-Health 1
LORRI Hydra at 3.2 km/pix (~10x18 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 23:16:11. Range 645,000 km.
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1.2megabits and no pictures? When do they start sending the flyby data?
Where ever did you pull 1.2 megabits from? It's more like 1000 bits/s, highest attainable rate 4000 bits/s. They're not wasting time downlinking images at that rate because there's still good science to be had at Pluto system.
20 minutes of telemetry at 1000 bit/s = 1.2 megabits
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1.2megabits and no pictures? When do they start sending the flyby data?
Where ever did you pull 1.2 megabits from? It's more like 1000 bits/s, highest attainable rate 4000 bits/s. They're not wasting time downlinking images at that rate because there's still good science to be had at Pluto system.
20 minutes times 60 seconds times 1000 bits/s = 1.2 megabits.
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For the record, 1.2 megabits is 150 kilobytes.
That's maybe one extremely-shrunken image. LORRI images are around 20 kb each, although that's in cases where most of the frame is black. Full imagery from up-close will certainly be much larger.
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1.2 megabits is 150 kilobytes, how many 1024x1024 images do you expect they can cram into that?
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1.2megabits and no pictures? When do they start sending the flyby data?
Where ever did you pull 1.2 megabits from? It's more like 1000 bits/s, highest attainable rate 4000 bits/s. They're not wasting time downlinking images at that rate because there's still good science to be had at Pluto system.
I suggest everyone go and read Emily Lakdawalla's excellent writeup on what to expect and when: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html
For those of you who just can't be bothered...
Wednesday, July 15 at 10:59 UT / 06:59 ET / 03:59 PT: 1.5hr downlink: First Look A
LORRI Charon at 2.3 km/pix (~520 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-14 02:41:49. Range 466,000 km. - The best single-frame photo of Charon that will be available during encounter period
LORRI Pluto at 3.9 km/pix (~615 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 20:02:43. Range 778,000 km. - Will make a stereo view with the one downlinked in E-Health 1
LORRI Hydra at 3.2 km/pix (~10x18 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 23:16:11. Range 645,000 km.
But that looks like it is happening within the first 20 minutes!
EDIT: OOPS wrong date - "I am just an egg" still thanks for answering with a time, even if it is a disappointing one. Though once I know that NH 'phoned home' on time I will stop biting my finger nails, hopefully before I get to my elbows.
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1.2 megabits is 150 kilobytes, how many 1024x1024 images do you expect they can cram into that?
2 with high compression, 1 with moderate compression
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Patience... even one image is going to take a significant chunk out of how much telemetry they can send down. Learning everything possible about the spacecraft's health is more important. The images are safe. If the spacecraft is dead, it doesn't matter anyway.
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1.2 megabits is 150 kilobytes, how many 1024x1024 images do you expect they can cram into that?
2 with high compression, 1 with moderate compression
And you throw away all knowledge of the spacecraft health, whether it actually successfully concluded all the observations, just for that instant gratification.
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If the spacecraft is dead, it doesn't matter anyway.
Precisely.
Just to get it straight, the first couple of images will be downlinked starting in about 14 hours from now, but they likely won't be released until the press briefing 22 hours from now. Exercise patience, everyone. The highest priority is confirming the spacecraft is healthy and in an expected state.
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Keep it on updates guys. We have other threads for discussion. It's me that gets it in the ear when people get e-mail notifications of an update and see it's chatter (which this post now is). Always the folk who should know better too.
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Looks like Madrid is ready to receive the "phone home call" with two dishes--including the big one--ready to answer.
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NASA TV coverage in 5 minutes
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two minutes
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NASA coverage opens with Stephen Hawking offering his congratulations
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graphics indicate the big dish is sending or receiving something
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graphics indicate the big dish is sending or receiving something
Sending
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This event is much better than the morning event - which was all over the place. This is structured.
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This is about the discovery of Pluto.
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graphics indicate the big dish is sending or receiving something
Sending
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He moved his telescope around on a lawnmower.
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Clyde Tombaugh
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And the family are there for this event.
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Our commentators for this evening
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lock on carrier
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OK, back on good stuff....
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Lock on telemetry!!! It made it!!!
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lock on telemetry
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in lock with telemetry with the spacecraft
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And that's confirmation it seems!
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RF nominal
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no rules fired--no resets?
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Nominal status...no rules have fired!
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nominal rf
nominal signal/noise ratio
nominal status. no rules have fired
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Recorded the expected amount of data.
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GNC is nominal.
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CNDH
SSR pointers where they are
therefore good data record
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Going through some status - and all good.
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Prop is nominal
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GNC and prop are healthy.
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good number of thruster counts
prop: nominal. 176.8
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Power is nominal.
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Thermal is nominal.
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power: all telemetry nominal. power is nominal
thermal: all temps green; nominal
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Report to PI: "We have a healthy spacecraft!"
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All nominal. As is Alan Stern's legacy :)
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"just like we practiced. Just like we planned it."
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DSN now showing sending & receiving of data
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Media briefing in half an hour (2130 Eastern)
First images tomorrow.
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NASA Mission Status Briefing scheduled for 9:30pm EDT.
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VIPs to arrive at half past the hour
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There will be one live NASA TV event tomorrow (Wed. July 15) from 3:00 - 4:00pm.
I assume EDT, but it wasn't explicitly stated.
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The New Horizons Team is being welcomed into the briefing room with loud applause and cheers!
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Mission manager pointing to the whole team on the stage: "These are the rock stars!"
"This mission demonstrates what this country, and what the world, can achieve, when we put our minds together."
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Presser is properly underway.
Don't expect much news tonight. Good stuff starts coming over the next week. Months to get all of it.
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Stream died, so no coverage from me.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
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Bolden speaking. Kids born the day NH launched - pretty cool.
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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden:
"Once again, our nation has achieved a first."
"An incredible day for everybody. New Horizons will return the most detailed measurements ever taken about Pluto. We have inspired a whole new generation." (points out "the Pluto Kids" in the audience - some children born the day NH launched).
"Today we have once again raised the bar of human potential."
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lost my normal feed too..
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The large group of New Horizon team members have now left the stage, to tremendous cheers.
John Grunsfeld, Alan Stern, Glen Fountain, and Alice Bowman, have been introduced to give some brief remarks.
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DSN communications have ceased for the moment
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John Grunsfeld:
"We made the history books. This moment can never be repeated."
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John Grunsfeld: 'specifically for the mission op team, and especially for the mission manager: get some sleep, mom'
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Some additional team members get recognized.
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Glen Fountain:
"I can't express my thanks and my awe of this team."
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Alice Bowman (to multiple chants of "Alice! Alice!")
"I can't express how I'm feeling about achieving a childhood dream."
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Alice Bowman: "I haven't had a lot of sleep." :)
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Planetary Society: What kind of data?
Stern: Engineering data
Bowman: "The spacecraft was happy"
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One fact worth noting for posterity in the live thread is that the received signal strength at the Madrid 70m DSN station from NH was ~3x10-22 kW.
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Bill Harwood: Thoughts on telemetry lock
Bowman: Parent-child feeling, it was great.
Spaceflight Now: Next DSN pass, what expecting
Stern: Tomorrow morning ("NY Times Data Set"), 5:50 a.m. several hours. 10x imagery. Pluto, Charon, & small satellites.
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Irene Klotz: Delta of location from expected to actual
Bowman: On track, time on track, location on track.
Universe Today: New ways to use instruments unconceived prior to launch.
Stern: Looking at new targets, using ALICE for High Energy Electron detection.
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Kid: What is the extended mission goal.
Stern: Project team to explore primordial Kuiper Belt objects and to get funded.
Pretty sure John44 will have this whole thing posted soon, probably better to watch that than read these snippets. A good, lighthearted event.
Grunsfeld shares a tweet from the President.
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Event concludes.
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AOS was 20:52:37 ET.
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Q&A begins:
Emily Lakdawalla:
Q: What kind of data came down?
A: Engineering data
Bill Harwood:
Q: What did you feel when signal lock came in?
A: The signal was there for us to capture, so it was great.
Q: When does data download begin?
A: 1st pass begins at 5:50 am, will last for several hours. new images. 10 times higher resolution. Data includes Pluto, Charon.
Irene Klotz
Q: location of NH now, and how close at close encounter?
A: on track, following the path.
Ken Cramer
Q: New ways to use the science instruments, that have been out there so long?
A: changed flight plan to image new moons. ALICE searching for new signals in the Pluto system, based on the great sensitivity of the instrument.
Pluto Kid
Q: what are the goals of the extended mission?
A: There are two. To explore the Kuiper belt, and to get the funding to do so.
Alan Boyle (to Alice Bowman)
Q: What have you been doing all day?
A: Nothing to ease the tension. Nap; email; additional data checks; then became stressed while waiting for signal.
Last question:
Q: exactly what time did you receive the signal?
A: 8:52:37 ET
Final remarks from Dr. Grunsfeld:
"Special day. Everybody tired."
"I have a message from Pres. Obama."
'Pluto just had its first visitor. Thanks, NASA!'
[end of event]
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Adding this,
since it seems to have been missed...
Ken Cramer (?) Universe today: New uses for science payload that weren't conceived at time of design/launch:
Stern: Yes, there are plans.
More moons first of all.
Jupiter's radiation belts: They "found out" that the detector on board (ALICE) could also detect MeV electrons. The now have a new mode for ALICE - which was calibrated with the help of Rosetta's ALICE flying by Earth (on a gravity assist) - called the HEAT mode - whereby they can now measure electron density profiles.
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NASA News Briefing on New Horizon Mission
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9508
New Horizons Phones Home - Mission Update
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9507
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New Horizons now talking to DSS 43 in Canberra and Voyager 1 is talking to DSS 45. Cool symbolism, past and future together.
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NASA @NASA 8m8 minutes ago
Today is the day! @NASANewHorizons 1st #PlutoFlyby images revealed at 3pm ET briefing. Watch: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
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A new image from Pluto, i think this one is from before closest approach taken on the 13th at 20:17 utc at a res of 0.8km
Pluto LORI Image Archive (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/view_obs.php?image=data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029912/lor_0299124574_0x632_sci_1.jpg&utc_time=2015-07-13%3Cbr%3E20:17:35%20UTC&description=&target=PLUTO&range=0.8M%20km&exposure=100%20msec)
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A new image from Pluto, i think this one is from before closest approach taken on the 13th at 20:17 utc at a res of 0.8km
Yes. That's the "failsafe" image taken just before radio silence. The resolution is not 0.8 km. That high of resolution did not occur until much closer to closest approach. Perhaps you misread the range at which the image was captured which was identified as being 0.8 Mkm (800,000 km).
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"A new image from Pluto,"
I posted this before, but it's a far better quality image;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589
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A new image from Pluto, i think this one is from before closest approach taken on the 13th at 20:17 utc at a res of 0.8km
Yes. That's the "failsafe" image taken just before radio silence. The resolution is not 0.8 km. That high of resolution did not occur until much closer to closest approach. Perhaps you misread the range at which the image was captured which was identified as being 0.8 Mkm (800,000 km).
Ok, well we are going to see much better in a hour.
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So who wants some photos of Pluto! ;D
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Going through the planets, with jokes aplenty.
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Alan Stern up now. Oh, not yet, this PAO wants to ramble on a bit more. Webcast is out of sync and not great quality too.
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Grunsfeld: Was worried no one would show up....NOT.
Slideshow looping through all 'major' celestial bodies, with the images from the spacecraft which visited them.
After Venus - "If anybody doesn't recognise the next planet, I'd like you to leave the room.. security will escort you to Area 51"
"This is the red planet, Mars - from Hubble.. you know I had to get a Hubble image in there somewhere.."
(Voyager image of Uranus) - "Somebody made a wisecrack that I put this in sideways.."
:D
Turning it over to Alan Stern
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Data down from five instruments.
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Oh perhaps this is the image....no idea. They keep cracking jokes and giggling.
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Charon's been observed to be active!
There are mountains in the Kuiper belt.
Observations of Hydra: 30% larger in one dimension. First multi-pixel image, so they're able to gauge size (as opposed to albedo assumption and gauging size from brightness)...
As soon as I type that, he talks about the albedo, and says that factoring in the range etc., that Hydra's made of water ice ... "which is cool!" <Laughter>
RALPH and LISA don't downlink today. Showing fail-safe data set.
CH4 on Pluto. (Me: If Elon's watching... how about Pluto ISRU?)
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!" ;)
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Ok, a cool image!
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They've been referring (informally) to the darkest area around Charon's north pole (yes, that one) as "Mordor"
A lot of geological description/characterisation. There might be some artefacts, which they'll process out later..
The canyon on the top right, is about 4-6 miles deep.
Higher resolution images expected... of said northern part.
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Cutting to Pluto
They're calling the heart "Tombaugh Reggio(?)"
(That gets a standing ovation)
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Canyon on Charon is 4-6 miles deep
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Surface....
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That inset includes the heart, and surrounding areas.
Mountains up to 11k' high.
There are almost NO impact craters there.(!!!!)
Eyeballing it - surface is ~100 million years old.
Nitrogen, and other inorganics, as well as CH4 etc. - from the spectroscopy (surface). But based on the gravity, and the mechanical strength of these ices, the height observed isn't sustainable. So they suspect a base of water ice, with a coating of the above.
Until now, all these icy worlds have been observed around Giant planets. But not the case with Pluto.
So, clearly, you don't need tidal heating to have a young surface
"That's a really important discovery we made this morning."
Alan adds: Voyager 2 (Hallowed be thy name :P) saw similar things (lack of craters) on Triton. But they weren't able to rule out tidal heating in the case of Neptune-Triton.
Alan talking about a paper that him and Kelsey have submitted earlier (accepted TODAY :D)
Combined with the atmospheric loss measured... the veneer of N2, CH4 ices are sustainable (according to the model they postulated) only if they have cryovolcanoes, or geysers. So the observations they've made imply (preliminary) that these must exist. So they'll look for them, presumably.
Alan re: Tombaugh Reggio - saw it from 70 million miles away, and is really, really bright; and is the brightest, most distinguishing feature; and so it was a fitting feature to bear the name of Pluto's discoverer.
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So that's what we're getting today. More on Friday.
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On to questions:
Irene Klotz - Re: Charon's activism, and origins of the bodies.
Kathy: "Uh...Uhmm.. Uhh... I don't know yet!"
Proceeds to talk about the surprising lack of craters.
Another member on the panel (haven't been paying attention to names): Expect more images...don't want to speculate now. But there definitely must be a source of heat.
Freelancer:
Mountains look really big. Volcanoes, or tectonic?
"No idea at this point. We'd like to still get more data on distribution etc."
Sky&Telescope:
Large gash - churning/spinning inside? (Didn't get all of this)
"We'll need better images, and crater counting."
Sky News: "I'd like to ask you a question with no scientific words in it." (#Facepalm)
"Did you see something wonderful?"
Alan:" Ya think?" What I wrote down on a piece of paper and put in a Manila folder 20 years ago, has been proved right.
Question regarding dark regions:
Waiting on spectroscopic information.
Alan: Waiting on stereo data as well... for topographic reconstruction.
Wired:
What besides tidal energy could be powering active geology?
"Let me think." Proceeds to postulate on the spot..
1. Radioactive heat... (All bodies generally have radioactive
2. Body could probably store heat of formation for a really long period of time. Maybe there's an ocean (implied sub-surface) that's freezing and the heat released from it, is melting the crust..
Alan: The double tidally locked system implies there isn't really tidal stressing. (AIUI)
Question: Don't hear any balloons popping today. Contrasts it with Mariner.
Alan disagrees with premise of the question. Charon's been very surprising.
Finding mountain ranges like the Rockies is also "balloon popping"
"I would never have believed that the first picture we get wouldn't have an impact crater"
Emily: Can you read the spectrum (squiggles)? Also, would Charon's forming impact have happened later than expected
Cyan line almost goes down to zero. Red terrain probably has something that scatters light more. Huge amount of data yet to be analysed.
Keith Cowing: What specificity will you get from RALPH and ALICE? Can you pinpoint the chemicals (beyond CH4)
Alan: Right now, the data is binned. So they'll wait for some more time for spatial resolution.
On to Will for the spectral resolution. Lot of chemicals in this wavelength range that have signatures in this region. Mixed bag. (e.g. Argon isn't going to be noticed in the surface for instance, but ALICE might pick it up in the atmosphere)
They could distinguish between Methane, Ethane, Propane, polycylic hydrocarbons etc.
Kathy adds there are inorganic chemicals too.
Also, they can ID things not only with the peaks, but also the slopes.
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http://www.tubechop.com/watch/6429522
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The new images are up on nasa's website.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html)
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Did folks catch this cool video of the surface inset on yesterdays full image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iyd-gh2rhM
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Social media questions now:
What will this data tell us about our own planet
Alan: Earth Moon system (formation etc.)
Pluto's atmospheric escape is also hydrodynamic and unique in that aspect...in that it's not happening at any other celestial body.
What percentage of Pluto will be imaged?
Kathy: All the illuminated part. 6.4 days rotational period.
They're going to use Charon-shine to image the winter pole of Pluto.
Cautions: Not to get your hopes up too much on Charon-shine...very feeble, plus looking in the direction of the sun.
How has Pluto been able to maintain the geological activity for this long?
Mentions the same radioactivity as well as ocean freezing thing. Naive (in retrospect) expectation was that a world of this size would not retain heat this long.
Back to accredited media:
Discover Magazine
Wondering about the diversity of the terrain... what are the questions that will be raised? Something looks hammocky, something looks like a fault. What are you going to be investigating?
"Those are good ones.", "Yeah..good job" :D
Alan Boyle:
Do you see a pattern? In the formation? Are those mountains at Tombaugh Reggio?
"These are right at the base of the heart, near the whale... which is the Cthulu Reggio now...informally.." We'd have to see more data
(didn't get affiliation, but cool question:) Could there be lava tubes? (referring to ridges)
Some of that looks like lava flows, but on a much larger scale.
The Irish guy :P: Your findings today...do they possibly indicate water worlds (if extrapolated to the extreme)?
Been thinking of these mid size bodies as candy coated, mucky mucky etc. Would need more data.
New Scientist:
What about analogs, and familiar touchstones...comparing these images of these two bodies to others.
There's some. Charon resembles a couple of Uranus' moons.
Kathy adds that Pluto's so diverse that they'll probably end up pulling it apart, and compare at a feature level.
Tariq Malik (Space.com):
How does it feel to get these images, and with noticeable improvement?
Alan: "It feels terrible. There's a lot of depression in the science team. We don't understand anything. We're all thinking of catching flights."
Alan: "There was a lot of excitement in the approach phase. I think I could characterise the mood in the four rooms where people are working... as bedlam." <Laughter>
"I don't think anyone would imagine that this would be this much of a toystore"
"This is what we came for."
Kathy: "This exceeds what we came for!"
<Applause>
Aviation Week:
Asks about the colour contrasts on Charon, and similar features/lack thereof on Pluto. (The colour pictures posted earlier were contrast stretched)
There are differences between the two bodies, and it's a puzzle.
---
And done for the day.
Next briefing from NASA HQ, 1300 hrs Eastern on Friday
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
It's not just the mass media - I'm looking forward to seeing - I would call them interesting - photos!
Keith
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Someone should check this.
To get a resolution of 1km at Pluto's distance from the Earth, we'd need an optical telescope about the diameter of Earth's moon.
I think.
Which is why we send probes with small telescopes a bit closer instead.
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
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Someone should check this.
To get a resolution of 1km at Pluto's distance from the Earth, we'd need an optical telescope about the diameter of Earth's moon.
I think.
Which is why we send probes with small telescopes a bit closer instead.
I think you've made a slight overestimation of the needed telescope size by a factor of 1000.
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Someone should check this.
To get a resolution of 1km at Pluto's distance from the Earth, we'd need an optical telescope about the diameter of Earth's moon.
I think.
Which is why we send probes with small telescopes a bit closer instead.
I think you've made a slight overestimation of the needed telescope size by a factor of 1000.
Oops.
There are three places to do that - meters/kilometers (distance and diameter) and nanometers/micrometers (wavelength). Mine was the former (diameter - meters, not kilometers).
Thanks.
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
How can be unimpressed by for the size of Pluto comparatively huge mountains of water ice.:)
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New Horizon Mission News Conference - July 15
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9510
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
How can be unimpressed by for the size of Pluto comparatively huge mountains of water ice.:)
Or those oddly puckered dimples!
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
How can be unimpressed by for the size of Pluto comparatively huge mountains of water ice.:)
Or those oddly puckered dimples!
It probably wouldn't be advisable to fall in them if they are vents of some type.
Someone's pointed out they look oddly reminiscent of the venting areas on Enceladus.
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
How can be unimpressed by for the size of Pluto comparatively huge mountains of water ice.:)
Or those oddly puckered dimples!
It probably wouldn't be advisable to fall in them if they are vents of some type.
Someone's pointed out they look oddly reminiscent of the venting areas on Enceladus.
With a little attention to planning, such incidents can usually be pre-vented. :)
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say the lack of impact craters indicates that the entire planetary surface sublimates and the planet is slowly evaporating like a giant comet. During perihelion, the planet is "active" and this creates the atmosphere detectable from earth. The tall mountains are areas of greater density that do not dissipate as quickly. Pluto is big enough that its gravity causes a lot of the ejected material to fall back on its surface as snow and move around creating and modifying surface features before eventually disappearing into space.
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That's actually a very interesting hypothesis.
Keith
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Mass media will be thinking "we want cool images!"
I'm guilty of that sentiment too. I was moving around in my seat waiting for Stern and Co. to stop talking and show some images... (One eye-rolling comment was by that one scientist in charge of the Ralph camera who was describing the instrument and its capabilities--only to mention that its data wasn't even on the ground yet)
And even then, the only pic that really wowed me was the photo of Charon. Can't wait till that Pluto mosaic is complete!
How can be unimpressed by for the size of Pluto comparatively huge mountains of water ice.:)
Heh, you're right-- That close-up shot of Pluto is ASTONISHING. To have huge mountains of water ice...well, if only the San Gabriel Mountains here in Southern California were made out of the same thing-- Water crisis (but not the drought itself) over! :)
(In hindsight, those water ice mountains would eventually become hills here in SoCal due to the huge L.A. population and the lack of raindrops and cool weather...but that topic is for another thread, or forum)
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say the lack of impact craters indicates that the entire planetary surface sublimates and the planet is slowly evaporating like a giant comet. During perihelion, the planet is "active" and this creates the atmosphere detectable from earth. The tall mountains are areas of greater density that do not dissipate as quickly. Pluto is big enough that its gravity causes a lot of the ejected material to fall back on its surface as snow and move around creating and modifying surface features before eventually disappearing into space.
I don't think there is any need at this time to start over reaching for alternative explanations for what is observed rather than accepting the more straight forward, and more likely explanation that Pluto has geological mechanisms for resurfacing itself.
We shouldn't fall into the trap that because Pluto & 67P have some vague similarities when looked at, that we end up reading too much into this and assume there is more than this superficial similarity between them.
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We must explore to find out just how ignorant we are and how lousy our assumptions are.
Some very interesting questions already and this will leave us wanting more data as blowing past at breakneck speed can only produce a finite amount of data and some weird stuff is going on way out yonder.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say the lack of impact craters indicates that the entire planetary surface sublimates and the planet is slowly evaporating like a giant comet. During perihelion, the planet is "active" and this creates the atmosphere detectable from earth. The tall mountains are areas of greater density that do not dissipate as quickly. Pluto is big enough that its gravity causes a lot of the ejected material to fall back on its surface as snow and move around creating and modifying surface features before eventually disappearing into space.
That's quite reasonable. But what it implies is that during Pluto's formation it was consistently further from the Sun than it is now, otherwise all those ices would never have been collected in the first place. So we're looking at some major orbital shifts, if that's the case.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say the lack of impact craters indicates that the entire planetary surface sublimates and the planet is slowly evaporating like a giant comet. During perihelion, the planet is "active" and this creates the atmosphere detectable from earth. The tall mountains are areas of greater density that do not dissipate as quickly. Pluto is big enough that its gravity causes a lot of the ejected material to fall back on its surface as snow and move around creating and modifying surface features before eventually disappearing into space.
I don't think there is any need at this time to start over reaching for alternative explanations for what is observed rather than accepting the more straight forward, and more likely explanation that Pluto has geological mechanisms for resurfacing itself.
Any mechanism you can think of for resurfacing is just as much an over-reach as Helodriver's. None of the usual suspects seem to be available as mechanisms for Pluto. It's going to have to be something unusual.
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You guys! ;D
(https://i.imgflip.com/o9bhg.jpg)
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FYI: NOVA has a program on the New Horizons Mission coming up at the top of the hour on PBS (at least for Canada, I'm not sure what the American program timing is). It's called 'Chasing Pluto'.
(It was on another channel at 8pm my time. Had some nice graphics and background info, along with some photos we had already seen on some of the earlier pressers. Robert Pearlman was on it too, as was the group leaders.)
edit:
correction, these were actually two different programs. The earlier one I had briefly seen that had Robert Pearlman on it (while I was on the phone) was on the Discovery channel titled: "Pluto: First Encounter". It is repeated tonight & tomorrow morning. Some of the images were repeated, but others were unique.
The NOVA program was very well done, and included today's surface close-up!
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1.2 million miles from Pluto, slightly faster relative speed than during the flyby.
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Took a bunch of photos from the events at APL on Tuesday, but then had to go back to work and couldn't follow this stuff here.
Anyway, before the evening press conference and the wait to see if they got a lock on the signal there was some entertainment outside the main auditorium at APL. Some of it was odd and had no connection to Pluto. For instance, they had magician David Blaine doing card tricks, and a paleontologist talking about a dinosaur he found (honestly, I have no idea). But they also had this guy, a photographer who took photos of the New Horizons team.
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Here's the crowd in the auditorium giving a standing ovation after confirmation that they got a lock on the signal and the spacecraft was healthy. Mike Neufeld, who wrote the Wernher von Braun biography as well as a good history article on the Pluto mission selection is a few rows in front of me. I knew a whole bunch of people at this event and barely got to talk to any of them.
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Still hard at work, Rex taking a scan of Pluto.
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FYI: NOVA has a program on the New Horizons Mission coming up at the top of the hour on PBS (at least for Canada, I'm not sure what the American program timing is). It's called 'Chasing Pluto'.
(It was on another channel at 8pm my time. Had some nice graphics and background info, along with some photos we had already seen on some of the earlier pressers. Robert Pearlman was on it too, as was the group leaders.)
edit:
correction, these were actually two different programs. The earlier one I had briefly seen that had Robert Pearlman on it (while I was on the phone) was on the Discovery channel titled: "Pluto: First Encounter". It is repeated tonight & tomorrow morning. Some of the images were repeated, but others were unique.
The NOVA program was very well done, and included today's surface close-up!
Thanks for that I believe NOVA is shown over here in the UK as well,
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Shouldn't three new Charon images be home about now?
ET 03:23 and 2 hours transfer time "First Look D"? When will they be public?
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Apparently, no new images are planned to be released until the news briefing Friday.
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Apparently, no new images are planned to be released until the news briefing Friday.
So Emily Lakdawalla made a typo for once? Obviously nobody is perfect. At the end of this blog post:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/07151720-first-look-at-new-horizons-pluto-charon.html
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It's incredibly easy to suffer from a typo, especially after very long days. The best thing anyone can do is send a quick e-mail to the author pointing it out, so it can be corrected.
So yeah, this is a good thread, I'm not going to trim good posts for the sake of "OMG, UPDATES!". So long as it's on topic, this thread works fine.
Top photos from Blackstar. Must have been fun to be there during these historic events!
Friday is supposed to be the next NASA public event, but everyone keep an eye out for items via the usual channels.
Although:
Apparently, no new images are planned to be released until the news briefing Friday.
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Apparently, no new images are planned to be released until the news briefing Friday.
So Emily Lakdawalla made a typo for once? Obviously nobody is perfect. At the end of this blog post:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/07151720-first-look-at-new-horizons-pluto-charon.html
I don't see the typo unless you're conflating images being downlinked with images being released.
There's also this tweet:
I asked several people today about plans for New Horizons image releases tomorrow. As of 6pm there were no plans for any releases tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/621505934616100864
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Top photos from Blackstar. Must have been fun to be there during these historic events!
It was fun. Except for the magician.
My car even made it onto Physics Today's Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/physicstoday/status/621051544616636416
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See link below for a new closeup image of Charon:
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-close-up-of-charon-s-mountain-in-a-moat
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Here is the Charon image. Note the depression with the raised center in the upper left of the box. Is that an irregular or partially-lit crater with a central peak? A volcano?
For comparison, here is a photo of Tycho Crater on our own Moon.
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Is there a glitch with NASA Eyes or is the rotation of NH intentional?
Edit: First time I've seen "Target: None". Nominal?
2nd Edit: Back to cruise mode I imagine.
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Make sure you tune into NASA TV today. I've just been in a room to see one of the photos that will be presented. Two people cheered. One person cried. One person fainted.
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Make sure you tune into NASA TV today. I've just been in a room to see one of the photos that will be presented. Two people cheered. One person cried. One person fainted.
AWESOME!!!!!
And just so everyone knows, that's at 1pm ET:
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-release-new-pluto-images-science-findings-at-july-17-nasa-tv-briefing
"NASA will hold a media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT Friday, July 17, to reveal new images of Pluto and discuss new science findings from Tuesday’s historic flyby.
The briefing will be held in James E. Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington. NASA Television and the agency's website will carry the briefing live.
Participants in the briefing will be:
Jim Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington
Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado
Randy Gladstone, New Horizons co-investigator at SwRI in San Antonio
Jeffrey Moore, New Horizons co-investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
Fran Bagenal, New Horizons co-investigator, University of Colorado, Boulder
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Make sure you tune into NASA TV today. I've just been in a room to see one of the photos that will be presented. Two people cheered. One person cried. One person fainted.
Assuming legit, I'll place my bet on active cryovolcanism.
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Make sure you tune into NASA TV today. I've just been in a room to see one of the photos that will be presented. Two people cheered. One person cried. One person fainted.
Assuming legit, I'll place my bet on active cryovolcanism.
I'm pretty sure this guy is legit but I also know that the kind of thing that could make a Nasa scientist faint may be very different to the kind of thing that would make me faint so I'm not going to get too excited yet. It sounds incredibly intriguing though!
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OK Boys and Girls, here we go!
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It's that grandstanding PAO again, so we may end up with a 10 minute speech from him again.
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Yep. Get on with it!
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Current location! :)
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Pluto is becoming a brand (public interest).
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Brian May....
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Wow it's Doctor Brian May.
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Spacecraft is doing well - Alan. Exited nine day close approach. Now in departure mode.
We have some big news.
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Press conference started.
2 millions mile past PLuto.
Looking at back of planet.
Downlinking data.
Images!
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Starting off with the "little news".
Nix.
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Nix satellite portrayed, 2-times better than earth-based resolution.
25 miles across.
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Ralph instrument. Carbon Monoxide overlay.
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CO2 detected and mapped in the centre of the "heart".
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Icy plains of Pluto
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couple like the model ;)
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Flyover.
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Atmosphere...
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Icy plains of Pluto
Whoa! It almost looks as though there is debris around the holes along the ice ridges. If so, it could be an indicator of cryovolcanism!
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graphic
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Plasma data:
Nitrogen atmosphere is escaping. Solar wind from the Sun at supersonic speeds crash into the escaping atmosphere and produce a shock upstream. Becomes ionized.
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Pluto has an escaping atmosphere at the rate of 500 tons per hour.
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Science talk....Pluto's active, I think was the comment.
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Features...
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Hills could have been pushed up, or "resistant to erosion" knobs.
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good speaker
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NASA presser:
In the latest data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature, informally named “Tombaugh Regio” (Tombaugh Region) after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
“This terrain is not easy to explain,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations.”
This fascinating icy plains region -- resembling frozen mud cracks on Earth -- has been informally named “Sputnik Planum” (Sputnik Plain) after the Earth’s first artificial satellite. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs. Some of these troughs have darker material within them, while others are traced by clumps of hills that appear to rise above the surrounding terrain. Elsewhere, the surface appears to be etched by fields of small pits that may have formed by a process called sublimation, in which ice turns directly from solid to gas, just as dry ice does on Earth.
Scientists have two working theories as to how these segments were formed. The irregular shapes may be the result of the contraction of surface materials, similar to what happens when mud dries. Alternatively, they may be a product of convection, similar to wax rising in a lava lamp. On Pluto, convection would occur within a surface layer of frozen carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen, driven by the scant warmth of Pluto’s interior.
Pluto’s icy plains also display dark streaks that are a few miles long. These streaks appear to be aligned in the same direction and may have been produced by winds blowing across the frozen surface.
The Tuesday “heart of the heart” image was taken when New Horizons was 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) from Pluto, and shows features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across. Mission scientists will learn more about these mysterious terrains from higher-resolution and stereo images that New Horizons will pull from its digital recorders and send back to Earth during the next year.
The New Horizons Atmospheres team observed Pluto’s atmosphere as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) above the surface, demonstrating that Pluto’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere is quite extended. This is the first observation of Pluto’s atmosphere at altitudes higher than 170 miles above the surface (270 kilometers).
The New Horizons Particles and Plasma team has discovered a region of cold, dense ionized gas tens of thousands of miles beyond Pluto -- the planet’s atmosphere being stripped away by the solar wind and lost to space.
“This is just a first tantalizing look at Pluto’s plasma environment,” said New Horizons co-investigator Fran Bagenal, University of Colorado, Boulder.
"With the flyby in the rearview mirror, a decade-long journey to Pluto is over --but, the science payoff is only beginning,” said Jim Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Data from New Horizons will continue to fuel discovery for years to come.”
Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado, added, “We’ve only scratched the surface of our Pluto exploration, but it already seems clear to me that in the initial reconnaissance of the solar system, the best was saved for last."
New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning.
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Wind streaks....
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Excellent coverage--thanks! (concur about the PAO too) :)
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50 GB of data has been collected.....and yet to collect. Will arrive 2:1 compression. 1GB on the ground so far.
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Heh...They had 65GB of flash memory available....didn't even get close to topping it off.
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Anyone getting the questions and answers? I'm at work and can't do audio.
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17 kg of RTG-capable Pu238 available to NASA, and production of more has been approved--production to begin late this year or early next!
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say the lack of impact craters indicates that the entire planetary surface sublimates and the planet is slowly evaporating like a giant comet. During perihelion, the planet is "active" and this creates the atmosphere detectable from earth. The tall mountains are areas of greater density that do not dissipate as quickly. Pluto is big enough that its gravity causes a lot of the ejected material to fall back on its surface as snow and move around creating and modifying surface features before eventually disappearing into space.
Wow, it looks like my interpretation may have some legs. That is a lot of atmospheric stripping going on to make an ion tail. Fantastic new data about a fascinating world.
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I like Fran, she's just so animated and passionate.
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Anyone getting the questions and answers? I'm at work and can't do audio.
There will be a recording of it on later. It's all planetary science stuff. Some of the pics were interesting...
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Icy plains of Pluto
Whoa! It almost looks as though there is debris around the holes along the ice ridges. If so, it could be an indicator of cryovolcanism!
Or wind.
Or both!
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Next presser is next Friday.
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Looks like that was it! Have to catch the rebroadcast later or if someone will summarize... ::) ;D
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"Science never sleeps"... What a great line! ;D
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"Science never sleeps"... What a great line! ;D
Another great line "Journalists love flyby's, they are science at the speed of journalism"
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"Science never sleeps"... What a great line! ;D
(https://i.imgflip.com/oc4kn.jpg)
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Nix satellite portrayed, 2-times better than earth-based resolution.
25 miles across.
Not exactly
Nix is portrayed with twice the number of pixels as the highest resolution of Pluto before New Horizons.
That puts each pixel at around a kilometer. Resolution from Earth is a couple of hundred kilometers.
(Hubble WFC3 HRC has 0.2 microradian pixels. At 5 billion km that's 1000 km per pixel.)
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50 GB of data has been collected.....and yet to collect. Will arrive 2:1 compression. 1GB on the ground so far.
Heh...They had 65GB of flash memory available....didn't even get close to topping it off.
I think both of these should be "Gb", not "GB". The recorders are 8GB (gigabytes) each (which is 64Gb), so there's no way to store 50GB plus the team has been talking mostly in "gigabits" in the past.
So, they probably have 1 gigabit (128MB) downloaded out of 50Gb (6.25GB).
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50 GB of data has been collected.....and yet to collect. Will arrive 2:1 compression. 1GB on the ground so far.
Heh...They had 65GB of flash memory available....didn't even get close to topping it off.
I think both of these should be "Gb", not "GB". The recorders are 8GB (gigabytes) each (which is 64Gb), so there's no way to store 50GB plus the team has been talking mostly in "gigabits" in the past.
So, they probably have 1 gigabit (128MB) downloaded out of 50Gb (6.25GB).
Picky...picky... :o ;D
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50 GB of data has been collected.....and yet to collect. Will arrive 2:1 compression. 1GB on the ground so far.
Heh...They had 65GB of flash memory available....didn't even get close to topping it off.
I think both of these should be "Gb", not "GB". The recorders are 8GB (gigabytes) each (which is 64Gb), so there's no way to store 50GB plus the team has been talking mostly in "gigabits" in the past.
So, they probably have 1 gigabit (128MB) downloaded out of 50Gb (6.25GB).
Picky...picky... :o ;D
Yeah...what's a factor of 8 among friends!
;-)
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NASA Post Flyby News Conference on the New Horizons Mission -- July 17
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9516
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Another great line "Journalists love flyby's, they are science at the speed of journalism"
That, 51 minutes into the news conference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAGwxl7FZWw&t=51m), was the lead-in for the following:
If you'll forgive me, I didn't want this week to fly by without remarking that this is the first planetary flyby in American history where the imaging specialist Jurrie van der Woude has not been intimately involved in distributing the imagery. Jurrie was the sixth person at the front table at every flyby. We completely relied upon him to provide us with imagery during those days. I don't know if it was something about us journalists, but NASA chose an Air Force fighter pilot from the Dutch Air Force to deal with us. But he was our link with the imaging teams for my entire professional career, and I didn't want this week to pass without mentioning Jurrie. He was a great public servant, he was a terrific guy, and I suppose, as we in Ireland might say, he was a mensch
He was a really great guy. Even when I was a young student, you could call him, he would pick up the phone, you could say, "Hi, I'm so-and-so from Pauls Valley, Oklahoma," and he would mail you pictures of the latest encounter. It was fantastic.
Jurrie van der Woude (June 18, 1935 - March 20, 2015), JPL Media relation's specialist, retired March 2001.
* Biographical notes (http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w6zh4cth).
* Looking Back: Jurrie van der Woude's 37 years at JPL (http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2003/141.html), Planetary Society interview from 2003. (2:17 - 29:20 of that 35 minute Planetary Radio show. Includes a very humorous anecdote regarding his low expectation for Mars Pathfinder's success.)
* Jurrie van der Woude... A life well spent (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erD7_5V6G24), a short video tribute including a clip of him speaking at the Planes of Fame Air Museum. (Not space related.)
* Space Stories at The History of Space Photography at the Williamson Gallery (https://www.flickr.com/photos/artcenteredu/sets/72157629958839769), a collection of photos including several with Jurrie.
~Kirk
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https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/623537875213271040?lang=en-gb
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKdAZKBWEAApASb.png)
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https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/623588197340217345?lang=en-gb
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKduKSsW8AAl-du.png)
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July 21, 2015
New Horizons Captures Two of Pluto's Smaller Moons
Pluto’s moon Nix (left), shown here in enhanced color as imaged by the New Horizons Ralph instrument, has a reddish spot that has attracted the interest of mission scientists. The data were obtained on the morning of July 14, 2015, and received on the ground on July 18. At the time the observations were taken New Horizons was about 102,000 miles (165,000 km) from Nix. The image shows features as small as approximately 2 miles (3 kilometers) across on Nix, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.
Pluto’s small, irregularly shaped moon Hydra (right) is revealed in this black and white image taken from New Horizons’ LORRI instrument on July 14, 2015, from a distance of about 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers). Features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) are visible on Hydra, which measures 34 miles (55 kilometers) in length.
While Pluto’s largest moon Charon has grabbed most of the lunar spotlight so far, these two smaller and lesser-known satellites are now getting some attention. Nix and Hydra – the second and third moons to be discovered – are approximately the same size, but their similarity ends there.
New Horizons’ first color image of Pluto’s moon Nix, in which colors have been enhanced, reveals an intriguing region on the jelly bean-shaped satellite, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.
Although the overall surface color of Nix is neutral grey in the image, the newfound region has a distinct red tint. Hints of a bull’s-eye pattern lead scientists to speculate that the reddish region is a crater. “Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings,” said mission scientist Carly Howett, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. She added, “This observation is so tantalizing, I’m finding it hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked.”
Meanwhile, the sharpest image yet received from New Horizons of Pluto’s satellite Hydra shows that its irregular shape resembles the state of Michigan. The new image was made by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers), and shows features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. There appear to be at least two large craters, one of which is mostly in shadow. The upper portion looks darker than the rest of Hydra, suggesting a possible difference in surface composition. From this image, mission scientists have estimated that Hydra is 34 miles (55 kilometers) long and 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide. Commented mission science collaborator Ted Stryk of Roane State Community College in Tennessee, “Before last week, Hydra was just a faint point of light, so it's a surreal experience to see it become an actual place, as we see its shape and spot recognizable features on its surface for the first time.”
Images of Pluto’s most recently discovered moons, Styx and Kerberos, are expected to be transmitted to Earth no later than mid-October.
Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005 using Hubble Space Telescope data by a research team led by New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. New Horizons’ findings on the surface characteristics and other properties of Nix and Hydra will help scientists understand the origins and subsequent history of Pluto and its moons.
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-captures-two-of-plutos-smaller-moons
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A new photo of Charon:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/view_obs.php?image=data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029917/lor_0299175721_0x632_sci_3.jpg&utc_time=2015-07-14%3Cbr%3E10:30:02%20UTC&description=[not+yet+coded]&target=CHARON&range=0.1M%20km&exposure=60%20msec
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The irregular shape of those small moons increase the likelihood (IMO at least) that they are separately coalesced debris field products from the collision that created Charon.
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http://space.io9.com/pluto-is-something-way-more-awesome-than-a-mere-planet-1719807379
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Newest science update is coming at 2:00PM Eastern Daylight Time on NASA TV. (about 1.5 hrs from this post)
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Here's the "Twitter is going crazy about us" PAO guy :)
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Didn't go off on a speech, hands over to John G (legend) - good good!
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John "Science never sleeps" heh (again).
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Oh, spoke too soon "Twitter, facebook and myspace are a buzz..."
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They now have 5 percent of the data.
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The new data to be presented is pre and post encounter data - stored and now received.
Alan Stern now speaking (really nice guy by the way, spoken to him on the phone a few times *name drop* - really, really nice man, not least super clever).
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False color:
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The other JG (Jim Green): This is the first time they're getting images and data taken with the spacecraft looking back (i.e. taken after closest approach)
Alan Stern showing a kickass bumper sticker designed by a systems engineer on the mission.
"My other vehicle explored Pluto" - which has the global view of Pluto which we've all seen over the past few days..
Until mid September - they're getting the data pertaining to the images already taken... (spectrometer, instrument headers etc.)
"For some of you if see a cardiologist, then you might want to leave the room"...
and shows a global image with 2x the previous best resolution.
I don't know if we should even screenshot this... I'm watching it on TV, and you'd need the large screen to do this thing justice :D
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First set of data now down. Next set in September.
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2.2km per pixel:
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"Like a real heart, it has two lobes".. (Well, Alan.. four, but I'll let you off)
They believe that the bright material (probably N2 snow), is being transported to the Eastern lobe from the Western lobe (perhaps aeolian, perhaps sublimation and recondensation)
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False color.
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Science...
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Charon has much less atmosphere - if any - than Pluto.
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Talking about the contrast enhanced false colour image: "This preliminary imaging is telling us that we brought the right set of instruments to Pluto" - because the other instruments have more sensitivity and resolution in the same parameters which show a large dynamic range.
Now showing the ALICE solar occultation of Charon.
The solar occultation plummets straight to zero (very very sharp)... so interpretation is that Charon has a much more rarefied atmosphere (if any).
Spectrum should be able to constrain the numbers... whatever residual atmosphere they have, might be N2.
They now have radio-occulation data from Pluto. (DSN transmission... and NH measurements.) (Me: Wow. They're really into post flyby science now)
Scientific surprise: The P_atm at the base of Pluto's atmosphere is much lower than expected.
HOLY SHOT. They got a shot of Pluto-Eclipsing the sun... Well.. not so much an eclipse as in the sun having any appreciably similar disc size.. but there's Pluto with a halo... which is all sorts of irony given the name of the celestial body. But that's science :D
The haze extends atleast 5x more from the surface of Pluto than expected by models.
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Pluto's atmosphere.
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Science....
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Now talking about possible origins for the haze in Pluto's atmosphere. Hydrocarbons radicalised by sunlight, (Methane).. forming more complex hydrocarbons, and this then precipitates.
They're really surprised by the extent though, and there may be other mechanisms.
Talking about the surface atmospheric pressure.
The variation in surface pressure is quite a bit, depending on Pluto's orbital position. (They've measured the increase in pressure, as it moves away from the sun.. and therefore cools, and therefore exhibits an increase in the surface pressure).
But the REX data shows a pressure that's about 15 mb lower than expected (or previously measured(?)/estimated)
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Now back to the colour enhanced global image of Pluto..
Our attention's being drawn to a banding pattern near the poles. (Me: Reminded of the Saturnian polar hexagon).
Explanation of the high orbital inclination of Pluto's axis of rotation, and the complexity of seasons that that implies. It's LATITUDINAL variation of colours and brightnesses... except for Tombaugh reggio. This might be correlated with the hazes.
A speciality of this region is that they see CO (absent in other places), in addition to CH4 and N2 ices.
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Seasonal transport of ice.
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Source region? (They wonder).
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Mosaic. Size of Texas.
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Geology now:
Ooh... 7 frame animation, of what will ultimately be a 12 frame animation. Showing Sputnik Planum.
(i.e. When the NASA feed decides to stop misbehaving)
"Sputnik Planum is famous, or really..well known for its hexagonal cells".... (Me: he's saying this for something that we only discovered.. LITERALLY two weeks ago. LOL :D)
The curved arrows in the picture (which Chris'll dutifully attach :P) denote glacial flow "streamlines". These ices are viscous, but they will flow.
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Evidence of recent geological activity....
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This image is absolutely mind blowing.
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The singular arrow, they think denotes an old impact crater, and Nitrogen glaciers flowing into them. They're talking about how this constrains the age of the surface area to (at most), a very small fraction of the solar system's age... and from what they know about N2 ices, there's "no reason that these processes can't be going on today".
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Blimey "This is a very busy scene"
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They found another mountain range toward the West (left.. don't know orientation) of Norgay Montes, and called it Hillary Montes.
"A lot of fine structure between the montes, and the Cthulu reggio."
Substantially smaller polygons though, indicating thinner ices.
Craters that have probably ponds of this Nitrogen ice.
Showed a fly-over (enabled by stereo data)... and mentioning craters... (casually saying, one of them was "the size of the DC metro area")
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Flyover!!
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NASA Presser:
Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.
“We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now -- 10 days after closest approach -- we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling."
Just seven hours after closest approach, New Horizons aimed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) back at Pluto, capturing sunlight streaming through the atmosphere and revealing hazes as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface. A preliminary analysis of the image shows two distinct layers of haze -- one about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 kilometers).
“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries -- it brings incredible beauty.”
Studying Pluto’s atmosphere provides clues as to what’s happening below.
“The hazes detected in this image are a key element in creating the complex hydrocarbon compounds that give Pluto’s surface its reddish hue,” said Michael Summers, New Horizons co-investigator at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles -- a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The breakdown of methane triggers the buildup of more complex hydrocarbon gases, such as ethylene and acetylene, which also were discovered in Pluto’s atmosphere by New Horizons. As these hydrocarbons fall to the lower, colder parts of the atmosphere, they condense into ice particles that create the hazes. Ultraviolent sunlight chemically converts hazes into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.
Scientists previously had calculated temperatures would be too warm for hazes to form at altitudes higher than 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.
“We’re going to need some new ideas to figure out what’s going on,” said Summers.
The New Horizons mission also found in LORRI images evidence of exotic ices flowing across Pluto’s surface and revealing signs of recent geologic activity, something scientists hoped to find but didn’t expect.
The new images show fascinating details within the Texas-sized plain, informally named Sputnik Planum, which lies within the western half of Pluto’s heart-shaped feature, known as Tombaugh Regio. There, a sheet of ice clearly appears to have flowed -- and may still be flowing -- in a manner similar to glaciers on Earth.
“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really smiling.”
Additionally, new compositional data from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument indicate the center of Sputnik Planum is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices.
“At Pluto’s temperatures of minus-390 degrees Fahrenheit, these ices can flow like a glacier,” said Bill McKinnon, deputy leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team at Washington University in St. Louis. “In the southernmost region of the heart, adjacent to the dark equatorial region, it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered terrain has been invaded by much newer icy deposits.”
View a simulated flyover using New Horizons’ close-approach images of Sputnik Planum and Pluto’s newly-discovered mountain range, informally named Hillary Montes, in the video below:
http://go.nasa.gov/1MMEdTb
The New Horizons mission will continue to send data stored in its onboard recorders back to Earth through late 2016. The spacecraft currently is 7.6 million miles (12.2 million kilometers) beyond Pluto, healthy and flying deeper into the Kuiper Belt.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. SwRI, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
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Questions:
Aviation News: There's something that look like a COPYRIGHT mark (:-/)... what's driving the flow into the craters? Elevation details etc.
Some parts of Pluto are probably ancient. Craters have dark central peaks, and bright zones of ice flowing into the sides.
They're measuring elevation of some of the mountains using shadow lengths.
<Stream dropped out>
How did the source region get there to begin with? Icy layer above? Something's allowing ices to well up from within? Surface mechanisms etc.
"We have a vast region, that appears to be truly a reservoir. Informally calling it a beating heart."
It could be formed by glaciers flowing into it. It could be from something deeper inside..where it's warmer etc. Really interesting ideas, and they're enjoying animated discussions.
Alan: Nothing like these images existed two weeks ago. And we're all reacting to it in real time.
Pluto has a very intimate structure - with a lot of complex, intricate network of geology interacting with each other, and it's rare among the pantheon of other objects. He's reminded of Titan.
Now on to the phone lines:
NYT - What are the temperatures - at various places?
Glaciers - 38 K. Solid nitrogen can creep, and it's very sensitive to temperature. Even 10s of metres... the pressure from the overburden of ice, can change the properties... making it less viscous and much more able to flow. (Sub-terranean N2 currents too..probably...a lot of work to do)
Reuters (Irene): Could you tell us where the earlier (2 year old) data set for Pluto's atmospheric pressure is from?
(Given the REX measurements led to a drop of 2x in 2 years).
This is data taken from stellar occultation. The difference with REX is that you can go right down to the surface with radio data. Very good data, and very low error on the REX.
Alan adds a caveat -- that the REX data is probably that sensitive that this pressure might even be a (relatively) transient phenomenon, which could be reversed.
JGreen adds that SOFIA also flew to NZ, and chased Pluto's shadow as it occulted another star. A valuable recent occultation that could add context to the data.
Re: The haze... you probably wouldn't see it looking vertically. Long slant lines of sight needed. Some question about a particular chemical name, and he explains that it's not a particular chemical, but a mixture.
Re: distribution of hazes... some bits of the haze, and some chemicals are dark.. and since they have a different albedo, they could act as markers for the transport mechanisms, when interpreted in concert with the colour banding of the surface
Another follow up: More accurate mass estimates?
No new mass estimates. Approach gave them great data. Major constraint (given models and everything)... was knowing the radius/diameter.. which NH estimated to a precision of +/- 1km around 1186 km. That has implications for density, and that will go into the models for the mass constraint. Pluto is less dense than they thought, but Pluto is still generally more rockier. Pluto is a rocky planet, with a thick icy shell, and may have a sub-shell ocean.
Pluto is very very close to spherical.
Pluto was probably spinning very very fast, after the impact of formation. So we think it must have been really really warm to ensure that no residual shape could be supported. Cautions this is all preliminary.
So we'll spend time going to conferences, and arriving at a consensus. Or not. That's how science works.
Sky and Telescope: (confused, and mistakes the atmospheric data for an increase in density) Could there be a possibility that Argon is playing a role in the composition measurement?
Spaceflight Insider: Considering Pluto's a lot more dynamic than what was previously thought, what does that do to a definition of a planet?
Alan: We've called the system a double planet, for very good reason. (Barycentre in free space between two bodies). Earth moon system is not quite there... deep in the mantle, but not out.
It's very hard NOT to call an object with this complexity, with an atmosphere, with geological cycles, and a complex system of moons.. very difficult to not call it a planet.
This is going to shake itself out... one scientist at a time.
Leo Enwright: Hypothetical ocean. How will that fit in to what we're seeing? Could the N2 glaciers be explained without the ocean?
No direct evidence for an interior liquid water ocean. What he means is that any mantle (icy) is much larger than what the models would have estimated earlier... and so there might be an underlying ocean. (Me: increased pressure?)
On to social media questions.
The way they make the false colour images, and another question about whether a non-atmopshere-planet would be able to give us that (Alan: "haunting") silhouette image.
Could sunlight be responsible for the N2 ice?
It's not sunlight, but it's heat. In fact, if there's a slope, it will move.
They've modelled the hexagon formation.. and if the ice is a half-mile deep... then it could even be due to slow convection of the ice. Internal heat. (leaking out, and heat of formation..)
When will see the other side of Pluto, in relatively high-res?
Already have those images on the ground. They saw that 3.2 days out from approach (given Pluto's rotation speed)
[I think the questioner was going for some magic with Charon shine.]
They do have imagery that could improve far side, and that'll come down in September (queued approach images, AIUI)
Back to the room:
How d'you have haze higher than expected, but the atmospheric pressure decrease? And did you get there in the nick of time (atmospheric escape).
The haze particles are very very buoyant, and they can stay far out.
Alan: The second question and the affirmative answer to it, kind of helped get NH get off in the 2000s, rather than later. Still more data to get.
..and done.
Not before a PAO quote though: "This team is not rewriting textbooks, they are writing textbooks".
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Pluto sends a breathtaking farewell to New Horizons. Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across. The image, delivered to Earth on July 23, is displayed with north at the top of the frame.
Credits: NASA/ JHUAPL/ SwRI
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Thanks to AJA for the notes!
No word on when the next presser will be.
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Thanks to AJA for the notes!
Happy to have a host (NSF) where I can nerd out over this! :D
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http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=4136&Itemid=
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My connection must have timed out when I wanted to post this, but Alan Stern's new bumper sticker:
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A cool thing about that bumper sticker is a little hard to see, but the picture of Pluto is in the rear-view mirror, in reference to having flown past the Pluto system.
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NASA News Conference – Update on Pluto - July 24
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9531
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YouTube version of today's press conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWr29KIs2Ns
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Any idea where you can download these images at a higher resoluition? The New Horizons website doesn't have them and I'd like a closer look at the higher res image of the whole planet (sorry, dwarf planet) which was released.
Thanks.
Keith
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Any idea where you can download these images at a higher resoluition? The New Horizons website doesn't have them and I'd like a closer look at the higher res image of the whole planet (sorry, dwarf planet) which was released.
Thanks.
Keith
Media materials of presentation.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Press-Conferences/July-24-2015.php
This is as high resolution as they get at the moment.
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Ah, that's much better. Many thanks.
Keith
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The image below is as intriguing in its own way as the earlier ones shown. This is the northern border of the Sputnik Planum formation.
The area labled "Rugged cratered terrain" is certainly rugged, but even it seems to have a relatively small number of craters, and those that do exist seem degraded and weathered. The rugged terrain itself seems fractured, with significant cross-hatch faulting and some possibly eroded surfaces.
Looks like even the older landscapes have not been geologically idle.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Press-Conferences/2015-07-24/resources/highRes_1920x1080/04_McKinnon_02c.jpg (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Press-Conferences/2015-07-24/resources/highRes_1920x1080/04_McKinnon_02c.jpg)
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There's been no further discussion of those strange holes from the very first detailed image that they presented of the surface.
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Do we have any official maps yet?
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Do we have any official maps yet?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=254
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I found a couple of old maps to fill in some gaps:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/pluto/maptoys.html (http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/pluto/maptoys.html)
Other:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-pluto.html (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/pluto/hst_pluto2.jpg)
Comparison:
(https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/UG4lyeO_iR7GjZz9gBRx--pICPpncKMf7qGP1gPavqY.jpg)
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Do we have any official maps yet?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=254
aaaaand... here come my new wallpaper, once again !
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Do we have any official maps yet?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=254
aaaaand... here come my new wallpaper, once again !
Are you sure? ;-)
http://snowfall-the-cat.deviantart.com/art/Pluto-Map-July-25-2015-546286799
http://ift.tt/1IqPrx9 ( http://shizznat.com/here-are-the-worlds-first-labeled-maps-of-pluto-and-charon/ )
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SOFIA Captures Pluto Occultation
Published on Jul 29, 2015
It is no easy task to capture the shadow of Pluto as it travels across the surface of Earth at more than 53,000 mph—but that is exactly what NASA scientists and flight crew did on the night of June 29, 2015. In a true team effort, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy or SOFIA's infrared telescope successfully observed the dwarf planet as it passed in front of a distant star. This event, known as an "occultation," allowed scientific analysis of Pluto and its atmosphere by flying SOFIA at the right moment to an exact location where Pluto's shadow fell on Earth. This video shows the careful planning and real time adaption of the observatory’s flight path leading up to observation, and highlights the data’s contributions to the New Horizons mission.
SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The aircraft is based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center facility in Palmdale, California. NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California is home to the SOFIA Science Center that is managed by NASA in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart.
For more information on SOFIA visit: http://www.nasa.gov/sofia
https://youtu.be/8kz4_00l6m0
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Pluto’s floating mountains, intriguing structures fascinate scientists
Sounds like someone has been reading this forum with this response.
They look like bacteria. They are not!” Stern joked. “In any case, these sublimation pits are essentially ubiquitous across the southern portions of Sputnik Planum. … Some of the sublimation pits have merged, and it appears that the material beneath the ice is very dark.”
One working hypothesis, he said, is that everywhere on Pluto the “actual planet” is very dark and all of the regions that are bright are due to ices deposited on the surface by atmospheric transport.
“It appears this is confirming that, because we can see through the volatiles down to what appears to be the dark heart of Pluto.”
http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/01/05/floating-mountains-intriguing-structures-fascinate-scientists/
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More likely our forum poster adopted that particular idea when they found it elsewhere, on some more conspiracy-minded site. ---Or else our friend has moved on to posting on the NH twitter feed after finding a somewhat hostile reception here?
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Jeff Foust – @jeff_foust
NASA’s Jim Green at #LEAG16: expect to have a “naming event” in the next year for 2014 MU69 (the KBO New Horizons will fly by on 1/1/19).
https://mobile.twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/793510839462481920
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The current issue of Sky & Telescope has a cover article on Pluto's moons. Earlier issues focused on Pluto and on its atmosphere and magnetosphere.
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The Final Images We Will Ever See of Pluto and Arrokoth
https://youtu.be/D5XPuS-Y0fg
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The Final Images We Will Ever See of Pluto and Arrokoth from the New Horizon spacecraft.
.....
Fixed that for you. Seems unlikely that we will not have another spacecraft visiting Pluto eventually. Maybe not for Arrokoth.
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Far beyond Pluto: What's next for NASA's New Horizons probe?
https://www.space.com/beyond-pluto-nasa-new-horizons-next-steps
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The PI’s Perspective: Extended Mission 2 Begins!
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/PI-Perspectives.php?page=piPerspective_11_29_2022
https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/1598409288568799232