New Horizons: A mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt

[ApophisAstros]

Fly Over Pluto (APOD)

You have to see this.........
Roger

(Edit: Link replaced by non-date-sensitive one -- Rick)

[Rick]

New Horizons Captures Two of Pluto's Smaller Moons

Pluto's moon Nix, shown 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 is revealed in a 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.

Full story and pictures from NASA

[Rick]

Pluto and Charon in Natural Color

Pluto and Charon are shown in a composite of natural-color images from New Horizons. Images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to produce these views, which portray Pluto and Charon as an observer riding on the spacecraft would see them. The images were acquired on July 13 and 14, 2015.

Picture here

[Rick]

Stunning Nightside Image Reveals Pluto's Hazy Skies

Speeding away from Pluto just seven hours after its July 14 closest approach, the New Horizons spacecraft looked back and captured this spectacular image of Pluto's atmosphere, backlit by the sun. The image reveals layers of haze that are several times higher than scientists predicted.

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).

See it here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/stunning-nightside-image-reveals-pluto-s-hazy-skies

[Rick]

NASA's New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto

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."

More from NASA here

[Rick]

Scientists Study Nitrogen Provision for Pluto's Atmosphere

The latest data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal diverse features on Pluto's surface and an atmosphere dominated by nitrogen gas. However, Pluto's small mass allows hundreds of tons of atmospheric nitrogen to escape into space each hour.

So where does all this nitrogen come from? Kelsi Singer, a postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute, and her mentor Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator and SwRI associate vice president, outlined likely sources in a paper titled, "On the Provenance of Pluto's Nitrogen." The Astrophysical Journal Letters accepted the paper for publication on July 15, just a day after the spacecraft's closest encounter with the icy dwarf planet.

"More nitrogen has to come from somewhere to resupply both the nitrogen ice that is moving around Pluto's surface in seasonal cycles, and the nitrogen that is escaping off the top of the atmosphere as the result of heating by ultraviolet light from the Sun," said Singer.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150812

[Rick]

NASA's New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target

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.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-team-selects-potential-kuiper-belt-flyby-target

[Rick]

NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft begins Intensive Data Downlink Phase

Seven weeks after New Horizons sped past the Pluto system to study Pluto and its moons – previously unexplored worlds – the mission team will begin intensive downlinking of the tens of gigabits of data the spacecraft collected and stored on its digital recorders. The process moves into high gear on Saturday, Sept. 5, with the entire downlink taking about one year to complete.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150904

[Rick]

New Pluto Images from NASA's New Horizons: It's Complicated

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.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated

[Rick]

Pluto 'Wows' in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

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.

This new view of Pluto's crescent – taken by New Horizons' wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on Sept. 13 – offers an oblique look across Plutonian landscapes with dramatic backlighting from the sun. It spectacularly highlights Pluto's varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across.

"This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "But this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto's atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains."

Owing to its favorable backlighting and high resolution, this MVIC image also reveals new details of hazes throughout Pluto's tenuous but extended nitrogen atmosphere. The image shows more than a dozen thin haze layers extending from near the ground to at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. In addition, the image reveals at least one bank of fog-like, low-lying haze illuminated by the setting sun against Pluto's dark side, raked by shadows from nearby mountains.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150917

[Rick]

New Horizons Finds Blue Skies and Water Ice on Pluto

The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.

"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team. "That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles," said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. "A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins."

Scientists believe the tholin particles form high in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart and ionizes nitrogen and methane molecules and allows them to react with each other to form more and more complex negatively and positively charged ions. When they recombine, they form very complex macromolecules, a process first found to occur in the upper atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. The more complex molecules continue to combine and grow until they become small particles; volatile gases condense and coat their surfaces with ice frost before they have time to fall through the atmosphere to the surface, where they add to Pluto's red coloring.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151008

[Rick]

Maneuver Moves New Horizons Spacecraft toward Next Potential Target

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.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151023

New Horizons Continues Toward Potential Kuiper Belt Target

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.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151026b

[Rick]

On Track: New Horizons Carries Out Third KBO Targeting Maneuver

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.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151029

[Rick]

The Youngest Crater on Charon?

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.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151029b

[Rick]

NASA's New Horizons Completes Record-Setting Kuiper Belt Targeting Maneuvers

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has successfully performed the last in a series of four targeting maneuvers that set it on course for a January 2019 encounter with 2014 MU69. This ancient body in the Kuiper Belt is more than a billion miles beyond Pluto; New Horizons will explore it if NASA approves an extended mission.

The four propulsive maneuvers were the most distant trajectory corrections ever performed by any spacecraft. The fourth maneuver, programmed into the spacecraft's computers and executed with New Horizons' hydrazine-fueled thrusters, started at approximately 1:15 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and lasted just under 20 minutes. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, began receiving data through NASA's Deep Space Network just before 7 p.m. EST on Wednesday indicating the final targeting maneuver went as planned.

The maneuvers didn't speed or slow the spacecraft as much as they "pushed" New Horizons sideways, giving it a 57 meter per second (128 mile per hour) nudge toward the KBO. That's enough to make New Horizons intercept MU69 in just over three years.

More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151105