Where New Horizons is

[saturno2]

Kinda disappointed; I guess I was expecting a ton of pictures after the fly by!

New Horizons mission was a success.
Patience to wait to the processing
of information.

[bystander]

Live Google Hangout on New Horizons' Mission to Pluto

During its flyby of Pluto last month, the New Horizons spacecraft obtained a treasure trove of scientific data, snapping by far the most detailed photographs ever taken of this mysterious object and its several moons. Instead of a cratered, barren orb, as some scientists expected, Pluto appears to be a startlingly dynamic world with soaring mountains and smooth plains of exotic ices.

On Wednesday, August 26, from 12:30 to 1:00 pm PDT (15:30 to 16:00 EDT; 19:30 to 20:00 UTC), join New Horizons team members Richard Binzel and Cathy Olkin, along with Kavli Prize Laureate Michael E. Brown, for a live Google Hangout webcast hosted by The Kavli Foundation. These planetary scientists will answer questions about the mechanisms that might be shaping Pluto’s landscape and what this strange new world can tell us about the other bodies at the solar system’s fringes. ...

[bystander]

New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Aug 28

[c]
Path of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft toward its next potential target, the Kuiper Belt
object 2014 MU69, nicknamed "PT1" (for "Potential Target 1") by the New Horizons team.
NASA must approve any New Horizons extended mission to explore a KBO.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker[/c][hr][/hr]

NASA has selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system. The destination is a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

This remote KBO was one of two identified as potential destinations and the one recommended to NASA by the New Horizons team. Although NASA has selected 2014 MU69 as the target, as part of its normal review process the agency will conduct a detailed assessment before officially approving the mission extension to conduct additional science.

“Even as the New Horizon’s spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. “While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science.”

Like all NASA missions that have finished their main objective but seek to do more exploration, the New Horizons team must write a proposal to the agency to fund a KBO mission. That proposal – due in 2016 – will be evaluated by an independent team of experts before NASA can decide about the go-ahead. ...

[bystander]

New Pluto Images from New Horizons: It's Complicated
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Sep 10

[img3="This image of Pluto’s largest moon Charon, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft 10 hours before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 290,000 miles (470,000 kilometers), is a recently downlinked, much higher quality version of a Charon image released on July 15. Charon, which is 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) in diameter, displays a surprisingly complex geological history, including tectonic fracturing; relatively smooth, fractured plains in the lower right; several enigmatic mountains surrounded by sunken terrain features on the right side; and heavily cratered regions in the center and upper left portion of the disk. There are also complex reflectivity patterns on Charon’s surface, including bright and dark crater rays, and the conspicuous dark north polar region at the top of the image. The smallest visible features are 2.9 miles 4.6 kilometers) in size."]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... -10-15.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

[img3="This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers)."]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... -10-15.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]Credits: NASA/JHU-APL/SwRI

http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
http://www.swri.org/
[hr][/hr]

New close-up images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveal a bewildering variety of surface features that have scientists reeling because of their range and complexity.

“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.”

New Horizons began its yearlong download of new images and other data over the Labor Day weekend. Images downlinked in the past few days have more than doubled the amount of Pluto’s surface seen at resolutions as good as 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel. They reveal new features as diverse as possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows that apparently oozed out of mountainous regions onto plains, and even networks of valleys that may have been carved by material flowing over Pluto’s surface. They also show large regions that display chaotically jumbled mountains reminiscent of disrupted terrains on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

“The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.”

New images also show the most heavily cratered -- and thus oldest -- terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains. There might even be a field of dark wind-blown dunes, among other possibilities. ...

[bystander]

Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Sep 17

The latest images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have scientists stunned – not only for their breathtaking views of Pluto’s majestic icy mountains, streams of frozen nitrogen and haunting low-lying hazes, but also for their strangely familiar, arctic look. ...

[saturno2]

Pluto is a small planet with secrets.
Before of New Horizons Mission
Pluto was little important.
Today is very important and for me
forever will be " a " planet ( no dwarf planet )

[bystander]

Perplexing Pluto: New ‘Snakeskin’ Image and More from New Horizons
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Sep 24

[saturno2]

Pluto is a " Pandora Box " , indeed

[orin stepanek]

I'm kinda liking the pictures that are slowly coming in lately; I am using today's Pluto picture of the day as a computer background!

[bystander]

Pluto’s Big Moon Charon Reveals a Colorful and Violent History
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 01

[c][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMBzJcvtt0[/youtube]Flying Over Charon - Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Stuart Robbins[/c][hr][/hr]

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon – and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history.

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.

“We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, “but I couldn't be more delighted with what we see!"

High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system on July 14, and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon’s equator. This great canyon system stretches across the entire face of Charon, more than a thousand miles, and probably around onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past.

“It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open,” said John Spencer, deputy lead for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “In respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.”

The team has also discovered that the plains south of the canyon, informally referred to as Vulcan Planum, have fewer large craters than the regions to the north, indicating that they are noticeably younger. The smoothness of the plains, as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear signs of wide-scale resurfacing. ...

[orin stepanek]

This One! Art; I especially like this one!

Click to view full size image

[Ann]

And those misty layers of atmosphere causes the sky on Pluto to be blue - or not!!! According to this site Pluto's thin atmosphere can look blue when see from space.

But the same page reports some wildly inaccurate and crazy news about imminent giant asteroid crashes on the Earth and UFO sightings and the like, and this "bad company" makes the claim about the Plutonian blue sky seem suspect.

But the article that goes with the Pluto pictures seems relatively OK.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

IMMHO (in my most etc) Pluto is more than a Dwarf; It is an exciting active Little Planet!

[bystander]

New Horizons team publishes first research paper presenting numerous Pluto system findings
Southwest Research Institute | 2015 Oct 15

New Horizons Team Publishes First Research Paper in Science, Describing Numerous Pluto System Findings
NASA | JHU-APL | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 15

New Horizons Reveals Pluto’s Striking Surface Variations & Unique Moon Rotations
University of Maryland | College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences | 2015 Oct 15

The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons - S. A. Stern et al

• Science 350(6258):aad1815 (16 Oct 2015) DOI: 10.1126/science.aad1815

[bystander]

Last of Pluto’s Moons – Mysterious Kerberos – Revealed by New Horizons
NASA | JHU-APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 22

[img3="This image of Kerberos was created by combining four individual Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures taken on July 14, 2015, approximately seven hours before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, at a range of 245,600 miles (396,100 km) from Kerberos. The image was deconvolved to recover the highest possible spatial resolution and oversampled by a factor of eight to reduce pixilation effects. Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, approximately 7.4 miles (12 km) across in its long dimension and 2.8 miles (4.5 km) in its shortest dimension."]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Scie ... rberos.jpg[/img3]

[img3="This composite image shows a sliver of Pluto's large moon, Charon, and all four of Pluto's small moons, as resolved by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons spacecraft. All the moons are displayed with a common intensity stretch and spatial scale (see scale bar). Charon is by far the largest of Pluto's moons, with a diameter of 751 miles (1,212 km). Nix and Hydra have comparable sizes, approximately 25 miles (40 km) across in their longest dimension above. Kerberos and Styx are much smaller and have comparable sizes, roughly 6-7 miles (10-12 km) across in their longest dimension. All four small moons have highly elongated shapes, a characteristic thought to be typical of small bodies in the Kuiper Belt. "]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Scie ... rtrait.jpg[/img3]

Image Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

[bystander]

Maneuver Moves New Horizons Toward Next Potential Target
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 23

Success in First of Four Such Maneuvers over the Next Two Weeks

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has carried out the first in a series of four initial targeting maneuvers designed to send it toward 2014 MU69 – a small Kuiper Belt object about a billion miles beyond Pluto, which the spacecraft historically explored in July.

The maneuver, which started at approximately 1:50 p.m. EDT on Oct. 22, used two of the spacecraft’s small hydrazine-fueled thrusters, lasted approximately 16 minutes and changed the spacecraft’s trajectory by about 10 meters per second. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, began receiving data through NASA’s Deep Space Network at approximately 8:30 p.m. EDT that indicated a successful maneuver.

All told, the four maneuvers will change New Horizons’ trajectory by approximately 57 meters per second, nudging it toward a prospective close encounter with MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. That flyby would be part of an extended mission that NASA still must approve; the New Horizons team will submit a formal proposal to NASA for that mission in early 2016.

The remaining three KBO targeting maneuvers are scheduled for Oct. 25, Oct. 28 and Nov. 4. ...

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?p=247487#p247487

[neufer]

Maneuver Moves New Horizons Toward Next Potential Target
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 23

Success in First of Four Such Maneuvers over the Next Two Weeks

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has carried out the first in a series of four initial targeting maneuvers designed to send it toward 2014 MU69 – a small Kuiper Belt object about a billion miles beyond Pluto, which the spacecraft historically explored in July.

The maneuver, which started at approximately 1:50 p.m. EDT on Oct. 22, used two of the spacecraft’s small hydrazine-fueled thrusters, lasted approximately 16 minutes and changed the spacecraft’s trajectory by about 10 meters per second.

The 10 m/s hydrazine velocity impulse is comparable with
the 9 m/s gravitational velocity impulse New Horizons got from Pluto.

In the ~100,000,000 seconds until it NH reaches 2014 MU69 this amounts to ~1,000,000 kilometers.

[orin stepanek]

today's PPOD kinda, sorta looks like roads with vehicles on it!

Click to view full size image

Explanation: This image is one of a series of images observed by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. This image was taken of Pluto roughly 27 minutes before closest approach. You can find raw LORRI images at pluto.jhuapl.edu

[orin stepanek]

today's PPOD kinda, sorta looks like roads with vehicles on it!

Click to view full size image

Explanation: This image is one of a series of images observed by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. This image was taken of Pluto roughly 27 minutes before closest approach. You can find raw LORRI images at pluto.jhuapl.edu

Oops; picture is changing everyday; was supposed to be like this!

[bystander]

New Horizons Continues Toward Potential Kuiper Belt Target
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 26

Spacecraft Team Reports Success in Second of Four Targeting Maneuvers

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has carried out the second in a series of four maneuvers propelling it toward an encounter with the ancient Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, a billion miles farther from the sun than Pluto.

The targeting maneuver, performed with the spacecraft’s hydrazine-fueled thrusters, started at approximately 1:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 25, and lasted about 25 minutes – the largest propulsive maneuver ever conducted by New Horizons. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, began receiving data through NASA’s Deep Space Network at approximately 8:25 p.m. EDT on Sunday that indicated a successful maneuver.

All told, the four maneuvers are designed to alter New Horizons’ path to send it toward a close encounter with MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. The flyby would be part of an extended mission that NASA still must approve; the New Horizons team will submit a formal proposal to NASA for that mission in early 2016. The science team hopes to bring the spacecraft closer to MU69 than it came to Pluto on July 14, which was 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers)

The two remaining KBO targeting maneuvers are scheduled for Oct. 28 and Nov. 4.

[bystander]

New Horizons Carries Out Third KBO Targeting Maneuver
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 30

[img3="Path to a KBO: Projected route of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft toward 2014 MU69, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. Planets are shown in their positions on Jan. 1, 2019, when New Horizons is projected to reach the small Kuiper Belt object. NASA must approve an extended mission for New Horizons to study the ancient KBO."]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/new ... o-date.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has successfully completed the third in a series of four maneuvers propelling it toward an encounter with the ancient Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, a billion miles farther from the sun than Pluto.

The targeting maneuver, performed with the spacecraft’s hydrazine-fueled thrusters, started at approximately 1:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Oct. 28, and lasted about 30 minutes – surpassing the Oct. 25 propulsive maneuver as the largest ever conducted by New Horizons. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, began receiving data through NASA’s Deep Space Network at approximately 8:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday that indicated a successful maneuver.

The four maneuvers are designed to alter New Horizons’ path to send it toward a close encounter with MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. The flyby would be part of an extended mission that NASA still must approve; the New Horizons team will submit a formal proposal to NASA for that mission in early 2016. The science team hopes to bring the spacecraft even closer to MU69 than it came to Pluto on July 14, which was approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers)

Capping the series, the fourth and final KBO targeting maneuver is scheduled for Nov. 4. As the New Horizons team learns more about the orbit and location of MU69 – the KBO was only discovered in summer 2014 – it will plan additional maneuvers to refine the path toward the prospective flyby in 2016 and beyond. ...

[bystander]

The Youngest Crater on Charon?
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 30

[img3="This composite image is based on observations from the New Horizons Ralph/LEISA instrument made at 10:25 UT (6:25 a.m. EDT) on July 14, 2015, when New Horizons was 50,000 miles (81,000 kilometers) from Charon. The spatial resolution is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel. The LEISA data were downlinked Oct. 1-4, 2015, and processed into a map of Charon's 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) panchromatic images used as the background in this composite were taken about 8:33 UT (4:33 a.m. EDT) July 14 at a resolution of 0.6 miles (0.9 kilometers) per pixel and downlinked Oct. 5-6. The ammonia absorption map from LEISA is shown in green on the LORRI image. The region covered by the yellow box is 174 miles across (280 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI"]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... otated.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

New Horizons scientists have discovered a striking contrast between one of the fresh craters on Pluto’s largest moon Charon and a neighboring crater dotting the moon’s Pluto-facing hemisphere.

The crater, informally named Organa, caught scientists’ attention as they were studying New Horizons’ highest-resolution infrared compositional scan of Charon. Organa and portions of the surrounding material ejected from it show infrared absorption at wavelengths of about 2.2 microns, indicating that the crater is rich in frozen ammonia – and, from what scientists have seen so far, unique on Pluto’s largest moon. The infrared spectrum of nearby Skywalker crater, for example, is similar to the rest of Charon's craters and surface, with features dominated by ordinary water ice.

Using telescopes, scientists first observed ammonia absorption on Charon in 2000, but the concentrations of ammonia around this crater are unprecedented.

"Why are these two similar-looking and similar-sized craters, so near to each other, so compositionally distinct?" asked Will Grundy, New Horizons Composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. "We have various ideas when it comes to the ammonia in Organa. The crater could be younger, or perhaps the impact that created it hit a pocket of ammonia-rich subsurface ice. Alternatively, maybe Organa’s impactor delivered its own ammonia."

Both craters are about the same size – roughly 5 kilometers [3 miles] in diameter – with similar appearances, including bright wisps or rays of ejected material, or ejecta. One apparent difference is that Organa has a central region of darker ejecta, though from the map created with data from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument, it appears that the ammonia-rich material extends beyond this dark area. ...

[bystander]

A Full View of Pluto’s Stunning Crescent
NASA | JHU APL | SwRI | New Horizons | 2015 Oct 30

[img3="Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI"]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Scie ... -29-15.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of Pluto.

This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto's atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost part of the disk. On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.

The backlighting highlights more than a dozen high-altitude layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The horizontal streaks in the sky beyond Pluto are stars, smeared out by the motion of the camera as it tracked Pluto. The image was taken with New Horizons' Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto. The resolution is 700 meters (0.4 miles).

[Ann]

That's a stunning image indeed, one of many from New Horizons. But I wish it had been annotated, because I'm getting a bit confused.

www.nasa.gov wrote:

The shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost part of the disk.

There isn't too much to be seen at the uppermost part of the disk, although there are bands of shadows on the right side of the disk.

On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.

I would have loved to see these features annotated.

But in any case, it is certainly a stunning image!

Ann

[geckzilla]

I can show you the shadow.