New Horizons Mission - Pluto + Charon Encounter

[sundayx Veteran]

User "ZLD" has morphed the MVIC color image onto the LORRI grayscale image http://t.co/XdbCFvuD1W

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/621073473302056961/photo/1

[Arachno 1D]

Whats the thesis as to the reason for the heart shaped cloud on the images?

[FloatingFatMan]

Whats the thesis as to the reason for the heart shaped cloud on the images?

 

I bet it's that bloody Hancock again!!  

 

 

First he wrecks the moon, now Pluto!

[DocM]

Whats the thesis as to the reason for the heart shaped cloud on the images?

Apophenia, the human brains tendency to see familiar images or patterns in random information. Man in the moon, animals in clouds etc.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

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Spectacular. The contrast and depth seen in the new images that are coming out are amazing.

[Dot Matrix]

Just amazing. I was expecting Pluto-Charon to look more like Ceres. But the idea of a youthful surface on both planets is simply amazing. I wonder if the gravitational tug of the inner giants might be the cause?

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Frank B posted the good shots so I thought I would throw up some miscellaneous goodies.....

 

A snapshot of Pluto shows fresh deposits of water ice bedrock and 11,000-foot mountains, revealing evidence Pluto

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Just some extra goodies...Some have already seen this but I thought I would lump it all into one post. Shortly, we will be getting updates weekly for a while but will be curtailed somewhat as instrument data gains priority. In the fall, more emphasis will be given to photo's, but i am sure that they will sneak us a treat once in a while. It would be nice to keep this thread going for the weekly updates.....

 

Animated Flyover....

 

 

Using three images beamed back to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Extended Mission?

The successful Pluto flyby July 14 leads engineers to believe that a later Kuiper Belt object flyby is technically feasible. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

 

 

The successful Pluto flyby July 14 leads engineers to believe that a later KBO flyby is technically feasible.

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Today's Space.com article....

 

 

"We're now in the first of our 'departure science' [command] loads," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said during a press briefing Friday (July 17).

 

 

 

"So we're looking back at the planet in that special geometry, looking at the night side and doing various experiments, and splitting our time downlinking data," Stern added.

New Horizons will operate in three separate "departure phases" that last until January 2016, when the mission's Pluto encounter officially ends. But data delivery to Earth will continue far beyond that date, because downlink rates are so slow

[BetaguyGZT]

They need to decide quickly then. It's NASA, so the sooner they begin discussing it the better. They might make the decision by, oh ... November. (Heh. Just kidding.  )

[Draggendrop Veteran]

They need to decide quickly then. It's NASA, so the sooner they begin discussing it the better. They might make the decision by, oh ... November. (Heh. Just kidding.  )

I think it would be a good idea to keep this thread going with the weekly updates and then the good stuff in the fall. Shortly after that, the data analysis should provide us with goodies as well......

 

I am NOT going to say anything about the data rate..........imho, I think they learned a lesson in architecture selection and language application, such as others had mentioned to them, long ago.

[BetaguyGZT]

I agree. The goodies are forthcoming, and New Horizons isn't done yet. Still plenty of fuel in the tank, and lots of power left for science. Let's keep truckin'.

[Arachno 1D]

Could they remotely reprogram the satalitte to achieve better transmission rates and less repetition or has it reached the limit of the hardware?

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Could they remotely reprogram the satalitte to achieve better transmission rates and less repetition or has it reached the limit of the hardware?

The mission being 9.5 years and technology used was approx 5 years prior to that. The mission has to share the space comm system with other missions as well. The probe is also low power (200 watt) and can not transmit data while running instrumentation. Imho, they are pretty much at the limit, and are actually doing quite well considering the long journey and the present flight hazards of the belt. We just have to keep fingers crossed, that the remainder of sensor ops get done and all data gets recovered before satellite issues arise.....Cheers

[BetaguyGZT]

Yeah. At the distance, and due to error correction, the transmission rate is 2kb/sec and peaks at 10kb/sec. Even with compression, it's still going to take 16 months to transmit everything back to Earth.

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Posted today, a little better photo of Nix and Hydra....

 

New views of Nix and Hydra, two of Pluto

[BetaguyGZT]

Oh MAN look at the color on Nix! That's fantastic ... I wonder what the spectral data is about both moons. Hopefully we'll get that information during the downlink.

[Arachno 1D]

 

https://twitter.com/susanbgoldberg/status/622073332901527552

National Geographic's Pluto issue, autographed by NASA's New Horizons team

 

 

Now we know that Pluto has its own Appalachians to match its Rockies.

NASA scientists identified this newfound range of water-ice mountains based on high-res images obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft.

The mountain range is located in the dwarf planet's heart-shaped feature, called Tombaugh Regio after Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh. The mountains rise to about the height of the Appalachian Mountains on Earth, which reach a maximum height of about 6,000 feet.

http://mashable.com/2015/07/21/nasa-more-ice-mountains-pluto/#:eyJzIjoidCIsImkiOiJfcW10ZXFlMTM5MW5ma2Z4dyJ9

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Update to arachnoid's photo from Spaceflight Now...

 

A newly discovered mountain range lies near the southwestern margin of Pluto

[Arachno 1D]

I wonder what causes the different lighter shading to the area compared to what we can see on the rest on the planet?

[Draggendrop Veteran]

It appears that the newer material is the lighter shade, the process of generation is not known at this time, and the oldest area's are the darker. The article and picture show a crater in the lower left, older crater, filled by newer, bright material.....

 

Cheers.....

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Enhanced color shot of Pluto...

 

 

 

New Horizons scientists use enhanced color images to detect differences in the composition and texture of Pluto's surface.

When close-up images are combined with color data from the Ralph instrument, it paints a new and surprising portrait of the dwarf planet. The "heart of the heart," Sputnik Planum, is suggestive of a source region of ices. The two bluish-white "lobes" that extend to the southwest and northeast of the "heart" may represent exotic ices being transported away from Sputnik Planum.

Four images from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view. The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).

Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

http://spaceref.com/pluto/pluto-dazzles-in-false-color.html

 

 

New Photo's

 

NASA will unveil more new photos of Pluto from New Horizons later today at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) during a press conference at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. You can watch the Pluto webcast live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.

http://www.space.com/30040-pluto-frozen-heart-false-color-video.html