New Horizons on it's way to Pluto
The New Horizons mission to Pluto finally got on it's way at 7pm tonight. I watched it with the kids on NASA TV. Facinating stuff.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4629486.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4629486.stm)
New Horizons, NASA's Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission is speeding on its way:
As we continue to fly outward from the Sun at 78,700 kilometers (48,600 miles) an hour, our communications time, or RTLT (round trip light time), is increasing rapidly. In fact, it's now approaching an hour and a half round trip, at the speed of light! For that reason, our mission and payload operations team has been working to complete a whole series of activities that are best done now, before the communications time increases still further. Since late September (more here (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspectives/piPerspective_current.php)).
The New Horizons probe is bearing down on Jupiter and a flyby that will swing the spacecraft out to Pluto.
The US mission was already the fastest ever launched, but the extra kick from the gas-giant's gravity will ensure it arrives at the dwarf planet by 2015.
So far, New Horizons has taken more than 20 images of Jupiter; hundreds more will have been obtained by the end of a late February flyby.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6279423.stm
Mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html
Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has returned stunning views of the Jupiter system captured during a recent flyby.
They include huge volcanic eruptions on the surface of the Io moon, as well as the first close-up look at a burgeoning red storm in Jupiter's atmosphere.
The probe passed within 2.3 million km of Jupiter in a gravity kick manoeuvre to pick up speed as it dashes towards its ultimate target of Pluto.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6613717.stm
And: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
A NASA spacecraft speeding across the solar system has officially covered half the distance of its trip to Pluto and its moons.
On Thursday, NASA's New Horizons probe zoomed past the 1.48 billion-mile (2.39 billion-km) mark, completing half the travel distance between Earth in 2006, when it launched, and where Pluto will be when the spacecraft arrives in July 2015.
"From here on out, we're on approach to an encounter with the Pluto system," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The second half of the journey begins."
New Horizons has been billed as NASA's fastest mission to visit another world. It is zooming across the solar system at about 36,000 mph (nearly 58,000 kph). Next month, it will cross the orbit of Uranus.
More: The 9th Planet (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/pluto-new-horizons-halfway-distance-100226.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed))
The discovery of a new moon around Pluto hints that a NASA spacecraft streaking toward the dwarf planet could uncover more surprises when it finally gets there.
The tiny new moon — announced today (July 20) and called P4 for now — brings the number of known Pluto satellites to four. And the find, made with the Hubble Space Telescope, suggests that NASA's New Horizons probe could make some big discoveries, too, when it makes a close flyby of Pluto in 2015, researchers said.
"The discovery of P4 just reinforces what we knew before: This is going to be completely new territory," said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "We can't wait."
More: http://www.space.com/12372-pluto-fourth-moon-nasa-spacecraft.html (http://www.space.com/12372-pluto-fourth-moon-nasa-spacecraft.html)
Bit more: More (http://www.space.com/12374-pluto-moon-choice-cerberus-hell.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29)
And in todays APOD : http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110722.html (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110722.html)
New Horizons: Is the Pluto System Dangerous?
by Alan Stern
November 7, 2011
New Horizons remains healthy and on course, now almost two times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, and approaching six years into its 9.5-year journey to the Pluto system.
We've taken the spacecraft out of hibernation to perform maintenance activities, and to re-point our radio antenna to compensate for Earth's movement around its orbit. This "hibernation wakeup' started November 5 and will last until November 15. Then New Horizons will hibernate again until early January, when we'll perform a more extensive, almost month-long wakeup.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_11_07_2011
At Pluto, Moons and Debris May Be Hazardous to New Horizons
Spacecraft Aims to Steer Clear of 'Debris Zones' During 2015 Flyby
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is now almost seven years into its 9½-year journey across the solar system to explore Pluto and its system of moons. Just over two years from now, in January 2015, New Horizons will begin encounter operations, which will culminate in a close approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, and the first-ever exploration of a planet in the Kuiper Belt.
As New Horizons has traveled through space, its science team has become increasingly aware of the possibility that dangerous debris may be orbiting in the Pluto system, putting the spacecraft and its exploration objectives into harm's way.
"We've found more and more moons orbiting near Pluto — the count is now up to five," says Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission and an associate vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). "And we've come to appreciate that those moons, as well as those not yet discovered, act as debris generators, populating the Pluto system with shards from collisions between those moons and small Kuiper Belt objects."
"Because our spacecraft is traveling so fast — more than 30,000 miles per hour — a collision with a single pebble, or even a millimeter-sized grain, could cripple or destroy New Horizons," adds New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), "so we need to steer clear of any debris zones around Pluto."
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20121016.php
The PI's Perspective: Celebrating 35 Years of Charon
This week the New Horizons mission team is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto's largest and "first" moon, Charon. This discovery was made in 1978 by U.S. Naval Observatory astronomers James Christy and Robert Harrington, working in Flagstaff, Ariz., and Washington, D.C.
Charon, whose discovery was first announced on July 7, 1978, orbits about 19,400 kilometers (12,500 miles) from Pluto and has a diameter of about 1,207 kilometers (750 miles) — about the width of Texas. At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest moon relative to its planet in our solar system.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_07_05_2013
Charon Revealed!
New Horizons Camera Spots Pluto's Largest Moon
NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft, using its highest-resolution telescopic camera, has spotted Pluto's Texas-sized, ice-covered moon Charon for the first time. This represents a major milestone on the spacecraft's 9½-year journey to conduct the initial reconnaissance of the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt and, in a sense, begins the mission's long-range study of the Pluto system.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20130710.php
Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy
New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!). We also updated our onboard fault protection (a.k.a. "autonomy") software, collected interplanetary cruise science data, and tracked the spacecraft for hundreds of hours to improve our trajectory knowledge. Added to this mix of routine summer wake-up activities for New Horizons were two major activities that had never been performed before.
The first of these, conducted in early July, was planned imaging of Pluto and its largest satellite, Charon. As you can see from the image and caption above, we accomplished this using our LORRI long-focal length camera. Seeing these images, revealing our target as a true planetary binary, viscerally signaled to me that we're nearing our destination and the end of the long, 3-billion-plus mile cruise we set out on back in January 2006.
More in the PI's Perspective, August 23rd 2013 (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_08_23_2013).
Cracks in Pluto's Moon Could Indicate it Once Had an Underground Ocean
If the icy surface of Pluto's giant moon Charon is cracked, analysis of the fractures could reveal if its interior was warm, perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water, according to a new NASA-funded study.
Pluto is an extremely distant world, orbiting the sun more than 29 times farther than Earth. With a surface temperature estimated to be about 380 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (around minus 229 degrees Celsius), the environment at Pluto is far too cold to allow liquid water on its surface. Pluto's moons are in the same frigid environment.
More here (http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/cracks-in-plutos-moon-could-indicate-it-once-had-an-underground-ocean/index.html)
New Horizons: Childhood's End
New Horizons is now just a few days from emerging from its next-to-last hibernation. The spacecraft has been hibernating about 80 percent of each year since we left Jupiter in 2007, but that will all end in December when we wake up for two years of Pluto encounter and post-encounter data downlink operations.
We began this particular hibernation period back in mid-January; it ends on Father's Day, June 15. When we wake up the bird, she'll be more than 100 million miles closer to Pluto than when we put her to sleep. Although we still have a little more than 300 million miles and a year to go, the mileage and time already traveled account for nearly 90 percent of the total journey - so we are truly in the last stages of the cruise from Earth to the solar system's vast unexplored frontier!
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php?page=piPerspective_06_11_2014
NASA's Hubble to Begin Search Beyond Pluto for a New Horizons Mission Target
The Kuiper Belt is the final frontier of our solar system, and also the vastest. Stretching from 3 to 5 billion miles from the Sun, it contains myriad primate icy bodies left over from the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. After passing the dwarf planet Pluto in July 2015, NASA's New Horizons space probe will hurtle deep into the Kuiper Belt at nearly 35,000 miles per hour. The Hubble Space Telescope is being used to search for a suitable Kuiper Belt object that New Horizons could pay a visit to. It would be our first and perhaps last look at such a remote relic from the distant past. The search is very challenging even for Hubble's sharp vision. It has to find something the size of Manhattan Island, as black as charcoal, and embedded against a snowstorm of background stars.
More: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/29/full/
What If Voyager Had Explored Pluto?
Across flights launched in 1977 and spanning the entirety of the 1980s, Voyagers 1 and 2 performed the historic, first detailed reconnaissance of our solar system's four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus). The essentially identical Voyagers were launched with a core mission to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems, and each spacecraft carried a powerful and diverse scientific instrument suite. After Saturn, Voyager 2 was tasked with reconnoitering Uranus and Neptune during an extended mission.
Although Pluto's orbital position relative to Neptune made it impossible for Voyager 2 to travel to it from Neptune, Voyager 1 actually could have reached Pluto after its Saturn flyby, had it been targeted to do so. In fact, NASA and the Voyager project actually considered this option, but eliminated it in 1980 â€" going instead with the very exiting but lower-risk opportunity to investigate Saturn's large, scientifically enticing, cloud-enshrouded and liquid-bearing moon Titan.
But if Voyager 1 had been sent to Pluto, it would have arrived in the spring of 1986, just after Voyager 2's exploration of Uranus that January. As New Horizons approaches Pluto in 2015, it's fun to think what we might have found almost 30 years ago had Voyager 1 - rather than New Horizons - been first to Pluto.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php
Hubble to Proceed with Full Search for New Horizons Targets
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been given the go-ahead to conduct an intensive search for a suitable outer solar system object that the New Horizons (NH) spacecraft could visit after the probe streaks though the Pluto system in July 2015.
Hubble observations will begin in July and are expected to conclude in August.
Assuming a suitable target is found at the completion of the survey and some follow-up observations are made later in the year, if NASA approves, the New Horizon's trajectory can be modified in the fall of 2015 to rendezvous with the target Kuiper Belt object (KBO) three to four years later.
More: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/35/full/
New Horizons Marks a 'Year Out' with a Successful Course Correction
New Horizons performed a slight course correction yesterday, a short maneuver designed to correct the spacecraft's arrival time – a year from now – at the precisely intended aim point at Pluto.
The maneuver – during which New Horizons fired its thrusters for just under 88 seconds – sped the craft up by about 2.4 miles per hour and keeps it on track for a flight past Pluto that culminates next July 14. "If we hadn't performed this maneuver, we would have arrived at Pluto about 36 minutes later than we wanted to," said Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "Making the adjustment now means we won't have to perform a bigger maneuver – and use more of the spacecraft's fuel – down the road."
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140715.php
ALMA Pinpoints Pluto to Help Guide NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are making high-precision measurements of Pluto's location and orbit around the Sun to help NASA's New Horizons spacecraft accurately home in on its target when it nears Pluto and its five known moons in July 2015.
Though observed for decades with ever-larger optical telescopes on Earth and in space, astronomers are still working out Pluto's exact position and path around our Solar System. This lingering uncertainty is due to Pluto's extreme distance from the Sun (approximately 40 times farther out than the Earth) and the fact that we have been studying it for only about one-third of its orbit. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and takes 248 years to complete one revolution around the Sun.
"With these limited observational data, our knowledge of Pluto's position could be wrong by several thousand kilometers, which compromises our ability to calculate efficient targeting maneuvers for the New Horizons spacecraft," said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The New Horizons team made use of the ALMA positioning data, together with newly analyzed visible light measurements stretching back to Pluto's discovery, to determine how to perform the first such scheduled course correction for targeting, known as a Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM), in July. This maneuver helped ensure that New Horizons uses the minimum fuel to reach Pluto, saving as much as possible for a potential extended mission to explore Kuiper Belt objects after the Pluto system flyby is complete.
More: https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/alma-pluto
New Horizons Spies Charon Orbiting Pluto
Like explorers of old peering through a shipboard telescope for a faint glimpse of their destination, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is taking a distant look at the Pluto system – in preparation for its historic encounter with the planet and its moons next summer.
"Filmed" with New Horizons' best onboard telescope – the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) – this movie covers Pluto and almost one full rotation of its largest moon, Charon. The 12 images that make up the movie were taken July 19-24, from a distance ranging from about 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million kilometers). Charon is orbiting approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto's surface.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140807.php
on this gif some stars seem to appear and disappear!
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/PR_E12_proper_sat_stars_3fps.gif (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/PR_E12_proper_sat_stars_3fps.gif)
rogern
New Horizons Commanded into Last Pre-Pluto Slumber
NASA's Pluto-bound spacecraft was put into hibernation this morning, following a successful 10-week annual checkout period. Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, verified that New Horizons entered hibernation at 9:21 a.m. EDT. With New Horizons now beyond Neptune's orbit – more than 2.75 billion miles from Earth – that signal needed just over four hours to reach the mission operations center through NASA's Deep Space Network.
"This is the final hibernation period on the flight to Pluto," says Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "When we wake up in December, it's to prepare for encounter, which begins the following month!"
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140829.php
New Horizons Makes its First Detection of Pluto's Moon Hydra
Using its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), New Horizons made its first detection of Pluto's small, faint, outermost known moon, Hydra. The images were taken to practice the long-exposure mosaics that the New Horizons team will use to search for additional moons and potentially hazardous debris near Pluto as the spacecraft approaches the Pluto system in May and June 2015.
Analysis of those images in September by Science Team members John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute, and Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, revealed Hydra —a moon the mission didn't expect to detect until next January, when New Horizons will be about twice as close as it was in July.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140912.php
Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission
Peering out to the dim, outer reaches of our solar system, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered three Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) the agency's New Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit after it flies by Pluto in July 2015.
The KBOs were detected through a dedicated Hubble observing program by a New Horizons search team that was awarded telescope time for this purpose.
"This has been a very challenging search and it's great that in the end Hubble could accomplish a detection – one NASA mission helping another," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.
The Kuiper Belt is a vast rim of primordial debris encircling our solar system. KBOs belong to a unique class of solar system objects that has never been visited by spacecraft and which contain clues to the origin of our solar system.
The KBOs Hubble found are each about 10 times larger than typical comets, but only about 1-2 percent of the size of Pluto. Unlike asteroids, KBOs have not been heated by the sun and are thought to represent a pristine, well preserved deep-freeze sample of what the outer solar system was like following its birth 4.6 billion years ago. The KBOs found in the Hubble data are thought to be the building blocks of dwarf planets such as Pluto.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-s-hubble-telescope-finds-potential-kuiper-belt-targets-for-new-horizons/)
New Horizons Set to Wake Up for Pluto Encounter
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation for the last time on Dec. 6. Between now and then, while the Pluto-bound probe enjoys three more weeks of electronic slumber, work on Earth is well under way to prepare the spacecraft for a six-month encounter with the dwarf planet that begins in January.
"New Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space – nearly three billion miles from home – but its rest is nearly over," says Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "It's time for New Horizons to wake up, get to work, and start making history."
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20141113.php
On Pluto's Doorstep, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens
Operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., confirmed at 9:53 p.m. (EST) that New Horizons, operating on pre-programmed computer commands, had switched from hibernation to "active" mode. Moving at light speed, the radio signal from New Horizons – currently more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth, and just over 162 million miles from Pluto – needed four hours and 26 minutes to reach NASA's Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia.
"This is a watershed event that signals the end of New Horizons crossing of a vast ocean of space to the very frontier of our solar system, and the beginning of the mission's primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
Since launching on January 19, 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days — about two-thirds of its flight time — in hibernation. Its 18 separate hibernation periods, from mid-2007 to late 2014, ranged from 36 days to 202 days in length. The team used hibernation to save wear and tear on spacecraft components and reduce the risk of system failures.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/on-plutos-doorstep-new-horizons-spacecraft-awakens-for-encounter/)
New Horizons Begins First Stages of Pluto Encounter
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has begun its long-awaited, historic encounter with Pluto, entering the first of several approach phases that will culminate with the first close-up flyby of the Pluto system six months from now.
"NASA's first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind's first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "The New Horizons team worked very hard to prepare for this first phase, and they did it flawlessly."
New Horizons launched in January 2006 and, after a voyage of more than 3 billion miles, will soar close to Pluto, inside the orbits of its five known moons, this July 14. The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons awoke from its final hibernation period in early December. Since then, the mission's science, engineering and spacecraft operations teams have configured the piano-sized probe for distant observations of the Pluto system, starting with a long-range photo shoot that begins Jan. 25.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20150115.php
NASA Spacecraft Returns New Images of Pluto En Route to Historic Encounter
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft returned its first new images of Pluto on Wednesday, as the probe closes in on the dwarf planet. Although still just a dot along with its largest moon, Charon, the images come on the 109th birthday of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the distant icy world in 1930.
"My dad would be thrilled with New Horizons," said Clyde Tombaugh's daughter Annette Tombaugh, of Las Cruces, New Mexico. "To actually see the planet that he had discovered, and find out more about it -- to get to see the moons of Pluto-- he would have been astounded. I'm sure it would have meant so much to him if he were still alive today."
New Horizons was more than 126 million miles (nearly 203 million kilometers) away from Pluto when it began taking images. The new images, taken with New Horizons' telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27, are the first acquired during the spacecraft's 2015 approach to the Pluto system, which culminates with a close flyby of Pluto and its moons on July 14.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/february/nasa-spacecraft-returns-new-images-of-pluto-en-route-to-historic-encounter/).
The View from New Horizons: A Full Day on Pluto-Charon
Pluto and Charon were observed for an entire rotation of each body; a "day" on Pluto and Charon is 6.4 Earth days. The first of the images was taken when New Horizons was about 3 billion miles from Earth, but just 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto – about 30% farther than Earth's distance from the Sun. The last frame came 6½ days later, with New Horizons more than 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) closer.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150212
85 Years after Pluto's Discovery, New Horizons Spots Small Moons Orbiting Pluto
Exactly 85 years after Clyde Tombaugh's historic discovery of Pluto, the NASA spacecraft set to encounter the icy planet this summer is providing its first views of the small moons orbiting Pluto.
The moons Nix and Hydra are visible in a series of images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from Jan. 27-Feb. 8, at distances ranging from about 125 million to 115 million miles (201 million to 186 million kilometers). The long-exposure images offer New Horizons' best view yet of these two small moons circling Pluto, which Tombaugh discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Feb. 18, 1930.
"Professor Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto was far ahead its time, heralding the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and a new class of planet," says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "The New Horizons team salutes his historic accomplishment."
Assembled into a seven-frame movie, the new images provide the spacecraft's first extended look at Hydra (identified by a yellow diamond) and its first-ever view of Nix (orange diamond). The right-hand image set has been specially processed to make the small moons easier to see.
"It's thrilling to watch the details of the Pluto system emerge as we close the distance to the spacecraft's July 14 encounter," says New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also from Southwest Research Institute. "This first good view of Nix and Hydra marks another major milestone, and a perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of Pluto's discovery."
See them at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150218
With Trajectory Correction, NASA's New Horizons Homes in on Pluto
A 93-second thruster burst today slightly adjusted the New Horizons spacecraft's trajectory toward Pluto.
This was the first maneuver of New Horizons' approach phase to Pluto; it was planned to slow the spacecraft's velocity by just 1.14 meters per second – barely a tap on the brakes for a probe moving about 14.5 kilometers per second – and moved its July 14 arrival time back on schedule with a change from the pre-burn course of 14 minutes and 30 seconds. It will also shift the course "sideways" (if looking from Earth) by 3,442 kilometers (2,139 miles) by July 14, sending the spacecraft toward a desired flyby close-approach target point. The shift was based on the latest orbit predictions of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, estimated from various sources, including optical-navigation images of the Pluto system taken by New Horizons in January and February.
Using commands transmitted to the spacecraft on March 8, the thrusters began firing at 5:15 a.m. EDT, and stopped just 93 seconds later. Initial telemetry later indicated the spacecraft was healthy and fired on command reached the New Horizons Mission Operations Center at APL through NASA's Deep Space Network at noon EDT; detailed data from the spacecraft's Guidance and Control system – which will show the team how accurately the maneuver performed as designed – is expected later today.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150310
Have you seen the latest images from New Horizons (and video) ?
PLUTO VIDEO (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150429)
Pluto doesn't look spherical at all. It looks decidedly potato shaped in this video.
NASA's New Horizons Detects Surface Features, Possible Polar Cap on Pluto
For the first time, images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto – the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.
The images were captured in early to mid-April from within 70 million miles (113 million kilometers), using the telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera on New Horizons. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.
"As we approach the Pluto system we are starting to see intriguing features such as a bright region near Pluto's visible pole, starting the great scientific adventure to understand this enigmatic celestial object," says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "As we get closer, the excitement is building in our quest to unravel the mysteries of Pluto using data from New Horizons."
More: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-new-horizons-detects-surface-features-possible-polar-cap-on-pluto
New Horizons Spots Pluto's Faintest Known Moons
It's a complete Pluto family photo – or at least a photo of the family members we've already met.
For the first time, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has photographed Kerberos and Styx – the smallest and faintest of Pluto's five known moons. Following the spacecraft's detection of Pluto's giant moon Charon in July 2013, and Pluto's smaller moons Hydra and Nix in July 2014 and January 2015, respectively, New Horizons is now within sight of all the known members of the Pluto system.
"New Horizons is now on the threshold of discovery," said mission science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "If the spacecraft observes any additional moons as we get closer to Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has ever seen before."
Drawing even closer to Pluto in mid-May, New Horizons will begin its first search for new moons or rings that might threaten the spacecraft on its passage through the Pluto system. The images of faint Styx and Kerberos shown here are allowing the search team to refine the techniques they will use to analyze those data, which will push the sensitivity limits even deeper.
Kerberos and Styx were discovered in 2011 and 2012, respectively, by New Horizons team members using the Hubble Space Telescope. Styx, circling Pluto every 20 days between the orbits of Charon and Nix, is likely just 4 to 13 miles (approximately 7 to 21 kilometers) in diameter, and Kerberos, orbiting between Nix and Hydra with a 32-day period, is just 6 to 20 miles (approximately 10 to 30 kilometers) in diameter. Each is 20 to 30 times fainter than Nix and Hydra.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150512
New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto
What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto's complex and high-contrast surface.
"These new images show us that Pluto's differing faces are each distinct; likely hinting at what may be very complex surface geology or variations in surface composition from place to place," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "These images also continue to support the hypothesis that Pluto has a polar cap whose extent varies with longitude; we'll be able to make a definitive determination of the polar bright region's iciness when we get compositional spectroscopy of that region in July."
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150527
See also on APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150527.html
So Far, All Clear: New Horizons Team Completes First Search for Pluto System Hazards
NASA's New Horizons team has analyzed the first set of hazard-search images of the Pluto system taken by the approaching spacecraft itself – and so far, all looks clear for the spacecraft's safe passage.
The observations were made May 11-12 from a range of 47 million miles (76 million kilometers) using the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons. For these observations, LORRI was instructed to take 144 10-second exposures, designed to allow a highly sensitive search for faint satellites, rings or dust sheets in the system. The mission team is looking carefully for any indications of dust or debris that might threaten New Horizons before the spacecraft's flight through the Pluto system on July 14; a particle as small as a grain of rice could be fatal.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150528
XKCD's take... (http://xkcd.com/1532/)
Different Faces of Pluto Emerging in New Images from New Horizons
The surface of Pluto is becoming better resolved as NASA's New Horizons spacecraft speeds closer to its July flight through the Pluto system.
A series of new images obtained by the spacecraft's telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during May 29-June 2 show Pluto is a complex world with very bright and very dark terrain, and areas of intermediate brightness in between. These images afford the best views ever obtained of the Pluto system.
New Horizons scientists used a technique called deconvolution to sharpen the raw, unprocessed pictures that the spacecraft beams back to Earth; the contrast in these latest images has also been stretched to bring out additional details. Deconvolution can occasionally produce artifacts, so the team will be carefully reviewing newer images taken from closer range to determine whether some of the tantalizing details seen in the images released today persist. Pluto's non-spherical appearance in these images is not real; it results from a combination of the image-processing technique and Pluto's large variations in surface brightness.
Since April, deconvolved images from New Horizons have allowed the science team to identify a wide variety of broad surface markings across Pluto, including the bright area at one pole that scientists believe is a polar cap.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/feature/different-faces-of-pluto-emerging-in-new-images-from-new-horizons).
It's interesting to see that it is not completely round but has some bumps.
Carole
Still looks like a potato to me. Doesn't look round at all.
One Month from Pluto: New Horizons on Track, All Clear, and Ready for Action
Now within one month of the historic Pluto flyby, NASA's New Horizons team has executed a small but important course correction for the spacecraft, completed updated analyses of possible hazards in the Pluto system, and is picking up the pace of science-data collection.
A 45-second thruster burst on June 14 refined New Horizons' trajectory toward Pluto, targeting the optimal aim point for the spacecraft's flight through the Pluto system.
This was only the second targeting maneuver of New Horizons' approach to Pluto; Sunday's burst adjusted the spacecraft's velocity by just 52 centimeters per second, aiming it toward the desired close-approach target point approximately 7,750 miles above Pluto's surface.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150615
Cool video.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oreeRm7Gj9k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oreeRm7Gj9k)
Roger
Exactly 37 Years after Its Discovery, Pluto's Moon Charon Is Being Revealed
In June 1978, U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer James Christy noticed something unusual. He was studying highly magnified photos of Pluto, and Pluto wasn't round. A small bump marred one side of blurry Pluto.
That bump turned out to be Pluto's largest moon, Charon, whose discovery Christy (working with late colleague Robert Harrington), made on June 22, 1978. Like Pluto in 1930, Charon was found using photographic plates taken in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Thirty-seven years later, Charon is about to be revealed by NASA's New Horizons mission. As New Horizons draws closer by nearly a million miles a day, every observation of it brings new knowledge about this mysterious moon – a world far larger than even the largest asteroid, Ceres.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622-2
Increasing Variety on Pluto's Close Approach Hemisphere, and a 'Dark Pole' on Charon
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft doesn't pass Pluto until July 14 – but the mission team is making new discoveries as the piano-sized probe bears down on the Pluto system.
In a long series of images obtained by New Horizons' telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) May 29-June 19, Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, appear to more than double in size. From this rapidly improving imagery, scientists on the New Horizons team have found that the "close approach hemisphere" on Pluto that New Horizons will fly over has the greatest variety of terrain types seen on the planet so far. They have also discovered that Charon has a "dark pole" – a mysterious dark region that forms a kind of anti-polar cap.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622-3
The PI's Perspective: Build the Buzz!
We are now deep in the encounter, and already seeing just how interesting Pluto and Charon promise to be. There's only one Pluto flyby planned in all of history, and it's happening next month!
New Horizons is healthy and has so far been conducting a textbook approach—all systems are 'Go' for the flyby! The mission team is very, very busy now, simultaneously planning and testing the last stages of flyby instructions for the spacecraft, analyzing daily data downlinks, navigating the spacecraft to its precise aim point near Pluto, and searching for possible hazards in the Pluto system — though, so far, the coast is clear. As to mission navigation, we performed a successful engine maneuver on June 14, and there is a good chance we'll do another small trim maneuver on July 1 to line up for the best possible Pluto science at closest approach on July 14. Stay tuned for more on that engine burn possibility.
More in The PI's Perspective (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/PI-Perspectives.php?page=piPerspective_06_25_2015)
Pluto certainly looks like it is going to have an interesting surface. I can't wait to see the close up images. Shame the craft won't be orbiting Pluto.
That is a shame I hadn't realise that would be a case.
Pluto is certainly an odd shape, which I think confirms they were right to classify it as a minor planet.
Carole
I think it might turn out to be spherical upon closer inspection and that the odd shape is due to images taken at low resolution plus dark and light patches across the surface.
New animations shows it is spherical with some huge contrast in light and dark across the surface.
VIDEO (http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/7/1/8880669/nasa-pluto-image-gif-new-horizons)
Still doesn't look completely spherical to me, it has a lump protruding in one place which you can see as it rotates.
Carole
New Horizons Color Images Reveal Two Distinct Faces of Pluto, Series of Spots that Fascinate
New color images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show two very different faces of the mysterious dwarf planet, one with a series of intriguing spots along the equator that are evenly spaced. Each of the spots is about 300 miles in diameter, with a surface area that's roughly the size of the state of Missouri.
Scientists have yet to see anything quite like the dark spots; their presence has piqued the interest of the New Horizons science team, due to the remarkable consistency in their spacing and size. While the origin of the spots is a mystery for now, the answer may be revealed as the spacecraft continues its approach to the mysterious dwarf planet. "It's a real puzzle—we don't know what the spots are, and we can't wait to find out," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder. "Also puzzling is the longstanding and dramatic difference in the colors and appearance of Pluto compared to its darker and grayer moon Charon."
New Horizons team members combined black-and-white images of Pluto and Charon from the spacecraft's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) with lower-resolution color data from the Ralph instrument to produce these views. We see the planet and its largest moon in approximately true color, that is, the way they would appear if you were riding on the New Horizons spacecraft. About half of Pluto is imaged, which means features shown near the bottom of the dwarf planet are at approximately at the equatorial line.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-color-images-reveal-two-distinct-faces-of-pluto-series-of-spots-that-fascinate)
New Horizons Team Responds to Spacecraft Anomaly
The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of July 4 that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.
The mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, lost contact with the unmanned spacecraft -- now 10 days from arrival at Pluto -- at 1:54 p.m. EDT, and regained communications with New Horizons at 3:15 p.m. EDT, through NASA's Deep Space Network.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/nh/new-horizons-responds-spacecraft-anomaly)
Technical problem pauses Pluto probe's science operations
NASA's New Horizons space probe, 10 days from a one-shot encounter with enigmatic Pluto, stopped collecting science data Saturday after a technical problem interrupted the spacecraft's tightly-choreographed flight plan.
Engineers at the New Horizons control centre in Maryland lost contact with the distant spacecraft for nearly an hour-and-a-half Saturday. The controllers restored communications with New Horizons via NASA's Deep Space Network antennas at 1915 GMT, according to a status update posted on the mission's website.
Astronomy Now's article on the incident. (http://astronomynow.com/2015/07/05/technical-problem-pauses-pluto-probes-science-operations/)
NASA's New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations
NASA's New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.
The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter "safe mode" on July 4 has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft. The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/nh/new-horizons-plans-july-7-return-to-normal-science-operations)
(Hope it all works smoothly...)
Latest Images of Pluto from New Horizons
These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that sent New Horizons into safe mode.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/latest-images-of-pluto-from-new-horizons
Latest images from New Horizons courtest of Popular Science...
CLICK HERE (http://www.popsci.com/new-horizons-spacecraft-sends-back-more-pluto-eye-candy?src=SOC&dom=fb)
Pluto almost looks like it has clouds.
Pluto and Charon: New Horizons' Dynamic Duo
They're a fascinating pair: Two icy worlds, spinning around their common center of gravity like a pair of figure skaters clasping hands. Scientists believe they were shaped by a cosmic collision billions of years ago, and yet, in many ways, they seem more like strangers than siblings.
A high-contrast array of bright and dark features covers Pluto's surface, while on Charon, only a dark polar region interrupts a generally more uniform light gray terrain. The reddish materials that color Pluto are absent on Charon. Pluto has a significant atmosphere; Charon does not. On Pluto, exotic ices like frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide have been found, while Charon's surface is made of frozen water and ammonia compounds. The interior of Pluto is mostly rock, while Charon contains equal measures of rock and water ice.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-and-charon-new-horizons-dynamic-duo
NASA Missions Have Their Eyes Peeled on Pluto
What's icy, has "wobbly" potato-shaped moons, and is the world's best-known dwarf planet? The answer is Pluto, and NASA's New Horizons is speeding towards the edge of our solar system for a July 14 flyby. It won't be making observations alone; NASA's fleet of observatories will be busy gathering data before and after to help piece together what we know about Pluto, and what features New Horizons data might help explain.
"NASA is aiming some of our most powerful space observatories at Pluto," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division Director at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "With their unique capabilities combined, we will have a multi-faceted view of the Pluto system complementary to New Horizons data."
Right around New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, Cassini will take an image of the dwarf planet from its station in orbit around Saturn. Although Cassini is the closest spacecraft to New Horizons' distant location, the image of Pluto will be but a faint dot on a field of stars. Even so, the image will provide a scientific measurement of Pluto from a different vantage point that will complement data collected by New Horizons.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4656
New Image of Pluto: 'Houston, We Have Geology'
It began as a point of light. Then, it evolved into a fuzzy orb. Now – in its latest portrait from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft – Pluto is being revealed as an intriguing new world with distinct surface features, including an immense dark band known as the "whale."
As the newest black and white image from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) appeared on the morning of July 10, members of the science team reacted with joy and delight, seeing Pluto as never before. There will no doubt be many similar moments to come. New images and data are being gathered each day as New Horizons speeds closer to a July 14 flyby of Pluto, following a journey of three billion miles.
"We're close enough now that we're just starting to see Pluto's geology," said New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur, NASA Headquarters in Washington, who's keenly interested in the gray area just above the whale's "tail" feature. "It's a unique transition region with a lot of dynamic processes interacting, which makes it of particular scientific interest."
More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-image-of-pluto-houston-we-have-geology
New Horizons' Last Portrait of Pluto's Puzzling Spots
Three billion miles from Earth and just two and a half million miles from Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken its best image of four dark spots that continue to captivate.
The spots appear on the side of Pluto that always faces its largest moon, Charon—the face that will be invisible to New Horizons when the spacecraft makes its close flyby the morning of July 14. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, describes this image as "the last, best look that anyone will have of Pluto's far side for decades to come."
The spots are connected to a dark belt that circles Pluto's equatorial region. What continues to pique the interest of scientists is their similar size and even spacing. "It's weird that they're spaced so regularly," says New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, is equally intrigued. "We can't tell whether they're plateaus or plains, or whether they're brightness variations on a completely smooth surface."
More: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-last-portrait-of-pluto-s-puzzling-spots
How Big Is Pluto? New Horizons Settles Decades-Long Debate
NASA's New Horizons mission has answered one of the most basic questions about Pluto—its size.
Mission scientists have found Pluto to be 1,473 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter, somewhat larger than many prior estimates. Images acquired with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were used to make this determination. This result confirms what was already suspected: Pluto is larger than all other known solar system objects beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"The size of Pluto has been debated since its discovery in 1930. We are excited to finally lay this question to rest," said mission scientist Bill McKinnon, Washington University, St. Louis.
Pluto's newly estimated size means that its density is slightly lower than previously thought, and the fraction of ice in its interior is slightly higher. Also, the lowest layer of Pluto's atmosphere, called the troposphere, is shallower than previously believed.
Measuring Pluto's size has been a decades-long challenge due to complicating factors from its atmosphere. Its largest moon Charon lacks a substantial atmosphere, and its diameter was easier to determine using ground-based telescopes. New Horizons observations of Charon confirm previous estimates of 751 miles (1208 km) kilometers) across.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150713
Just 3 hours to go !!!
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."
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-three-billion-mile-journey-to-pluto-reaches-historic-encounter)
Those latest images will keep the geologists busy for quite some time.
Assuming your ability to be impressed has not been completely sated, here's a killer stat: after travelling for 4.88bn km and nine-and-a-half years, New Horizons carried out its Pluto flyby within 72 seconds of its expected time..
That's 99.999976% accurate...
NASA's New Horizons 'Phones Home' Safe after Pluto Flyby
The call everyone was waiting for is in. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft phoned home just before 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday to tell the mission team and the world it had accomplished the historic first-ever flyby of Pluto.
"I know today we've inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "This is a historic win for science and for exploration. We've truly, once again raised the bar of human potential."
The preprogrammed "phone call" -- a 15-minute series of status messages beamed back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland through NASA's Deep Space Network -- ended a very suspenseful 21-hour waiting period. New Horizons had been instructed to spend the day gathering the maximum amount of data, and not communicating with Earth until it was beyond the Pluto system.
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-new-horizons-phones-home-safe-after-pluto-flyby)
Charon's Surprising Youthful and Varied Terrain
A swath of cliffs and troughs stretches about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from left to right, suggesting widespread fracturing of Charon's crust, likely a result of internal processes. At upper right, along the moon's curving edge, is a canyon estimated to be 4 to 6 miles (7 to 9 kilometers) deep.
Mission scientists are surprised by the apparent lack of craters on Charon. South of the moon's equator, at the bottom of this image, terrain is lit by the slanting rays of the sun, creating shadows that make it easier to distinguish topography. Even here, however, relatively few craters are visible, indicating a relatively young surface that has been reshaped by geologic activity.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/charon-s-surprising-youthful-and-varied-terrain
The Icy Mountains of Pluto
New close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system -- and may still be in the process of building, says Jeff Moore of New Horizons' Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI). That suggests the close-up region, which covers less than one percent of Pluto's surface, may still be geologically active today.
Moore and his colleagues base the youthful age estimate on the lack of craters in this scene. Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered -- unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.
"This is one of the youngest surfaces we've ever seen in the solar system," says Moore.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-icy-mountains-of-pluto
From Mountains to Moons: Multiple Discoveries from NASA's New Horizons Pluto Mission
Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon, Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by NASA's New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft's first ever Pluto flyby.
"Pluto New Horizons is a true mission of exploration showing us why basic scientific research is so important," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission has had nine years to build expectations about what we would see during closest approach to Pluto and Charon. Today, we get the first sampling of the scientific treasure collected during those critical moments, and I can tell you it dramatically surpasses those high expectations."
"Home run!" said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "New Horizons is returning amazing results already. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind blowing."
More from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/from-mountains-to-moons-multiple-discoveries-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-pluto-mission)
Here are some other New Horizons Pluto stories. Click on the titles to read the stories and see the pictures...
Hydra Emerges from the Shadows (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/hydra-emerges-from-the-shadows)QuoteSince its discovery in 2005, Pluto's moon Hydra has been known only as a fuzzy dot of uncertain shape, size, and reflectivity. Imaging obtained during New Horizons' historic transit of the Pluto-Charon system and transmitted to Earth early this morning has definitively resolved these fundamental properties of Pluto's outermost moon. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) observations revealed an irregularly shaped body characterized by significant brightness variations over the surface. With a resolution of 2 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel, the LORRI image shows the tiny potato-shaped moon measures 27 miles (43 kilometers) by 20 miles (33 kilometers).
Views of Pluto Through the Years (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/views-of-pluto-through-the-years)QuoteThis animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.
Life Imitates Art: Pluto's Face Predicted in 1979 (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/07/15/art_pluto_s_features_predicted_in_1979.html)QuoteI talk a lot about how entwined art and science are, but I don't think I've ever seen as good an example as this: Space Artist Don Dixon predicted what Pluto looked like back in 1979 ... and he nailed it.
Pluto By Moonlight (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-by-moonlight)QuoteIt's Antarctic winter on Pluto. The sun has not been visible for twenty years in this frigid south polar region; it will not shine again for another 80 years. The only source of natural light is starlight and moonlight from Pluto's largest moon, Charon.
Pluto: The Ice Plot Thickens
The latest spectra from New Horizons Ralph instrument reveal an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.
"We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light," said New Horizons co-investigator Will Grundy, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. In one of the visually dark equatorial patches, the methane ice has shallower infrared absorptions indicative of a very different texture. "The spectrum appears as if the ice is less diluted in nitrogen," Grundy speculated "or that it has a different texture in that area."
An Earthly example of different textures of a frozen substance: a fluffy bank of clean snow is bright white, but compacted polar ice looks blue. New Horizons' surface composition team, led by Grundy, has begun the intricate process of analyzing Ralph data to determine the detailed compositions of the distinct regions on Pluto.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-the-ice-plot-thickens
New Horizons Close-Up of Charon's 'Mountain in a Moat'
This new image of an area on Pluto's largest moon Charon has a captivating feature—a depression with a peak in the middle, shown here in the upper left corner of the inset.
The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters. "The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat," said Jeff Moore with NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, who leads New Horizons' Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. "This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped."
See it here: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-close-up-of-charon-s-mountain-in-a-moat
I'm pretty sure that inset rectangle is in the wrong place.
Amazing feature... Not looking at the inset though!
Roger
More stories. Click the titles to see the pictures and read the detail:
NASA's New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto's 'Heart' (http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-new-horizons-discovers-frozen-plains-in-the-heart-of-pluto-s-heart)QuoteIn 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.
Frozen Carbon Monoxide in Pluto's 'Heart' (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/frozen-carbon-monoxide-in-pluto-s-heart)QuotePeering closely at the "heart of Pluto," in the western half of what mission scientists have informally named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region), New Horizons' Ralph instrument revealed evidence of carbon monoxide ice.
Pluto Wags its Tail: New Horizons Discovers a Cold, Dense Region of Atmospheric Ions Behind Pluto (http://www.nasa.gov/nh/pluto-wags-its-tail)QuoteNew Horizons 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. Beginning an hour and half after closest approach, the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument observed a cavity in the solar wind -- the outflow of electrically charged particles from the Sun -- between 48,000 miles (77,000 km) and 68,000 miles (109,000 km) downstream of Pluto. SWAP data revealed this cavity to be populated with nitrogen ions forming a "plasma tail" of undetermined structure and length extending behind the planet.
New Horizons Reveals Pluto's Extended Atmosphere (http://www.nasa.gov/nh/new-horizons-reveals-pluto-extended-atmosphere)QuoteScientists working with NASA's New Horizons spacecraft have observed Pluto's atmosphere as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) above the surface of the planet, 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 planet's surface (270 kilometers).
The new information was gathered by New Horizon's Alice imaging spectrograph during a carefully designed alignment of the sun, Pluto, and the spacecraft starting about an hour after the craft's closest approach to the planet on July 14. During the event known as a solar occultation, New Horizons passed through Pluto's shadow while the sun backlit Pluto's atmosphere.
Fly Over Pluto (APOD) (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150718.html)
You have to see this.........
Roger
(Edit: Link replaced by non-date-sensitive one -- 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 (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-captures-two-of-plutos-smaller-moons)
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 (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-and-charon-in-natural-color)
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
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 (http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-new-horizons-team-finds-haze-flowing-ice-on-pluto)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
At Pluto, New Horizons Finds Geology of All Ages, Possible Ice Volcanoes, Insight into Planetary Origins
From possible ice volcanoes to geologically diverse surfaces to oddly behaving moons that could have formed through mergers of smaller moons, Pluto system discoveries continue to surprise scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission team.
"The New Horizons mission has taken what we thought we knew about Pluto and turned it upside down," said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It's why we explore – to satisfy our innate curiosity and answer deeper questions about how we got here and what lies beyond the next horizon."
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151109
An ammonia-water slurry may swirl below Pluto's icy surface
Researchers propose an ammonia-water slurry as the basis for Pluto's newly discovered geologic activity and possible volcanism, and offer a new method to predict planetary vigor.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society on Monday (Nov. 9) in National Harbor, Maryland.
Graduate student Alex Trowbridge, under the guidance of Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and professor of physics and aerospace engineering, performed the research in response to data reported by NASA's New Horizons mission to the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt that revealed a surprising amount of geologic activity on the dwarf planet's surface.
"We wanted to know why this small, icy cold dwarf planet is so active and to find a way to predict such activity for planets and other planetary bodies for which we have little information," Melosh said. "The New Horizons mission has already provided an astounding amount of new information, and its surprises remind us how little we know about the far reaches of our solar system and the depths of outer space beyond it. This is why these missions are so important."
A geologically active surface that buries craters and raises mountains means the mantle that lies below is moving.
Read more... (http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q4/an-ammonia-water-slurry-may-swirl-below-plutos-icy-surface.html)
Pluto's Close-up, Now in Color
This enhanced color mosaic combines some of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its July 14 flyby. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto's surface. Lower resolution color data (at about 2,066 feet, or 630 meters, per pixel) were added to create this new image.
See here... (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=389)
Pluto's 'Hulk-like' Moon Charon: A Possible Ancient Ocean?
Pluto's largest moon may have gotten too big for its own skin.
Images from NASA's New Horizons mission suggest that Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing out on the moon's surface and causing it to stretch and fracture on a massive scale.
The side of Charon viewed by the passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterized by a system of "pull apart" tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys—the latter sometimes reaching more than 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) deep. Charon's tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and –like Bruce Banner tearing his shirt as he becomes the Incredible Hulk – Charon's surface fractured as it stretched.
More from NASA (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160218)
Science Papers Reveal New Aspects of Pluto and its Moons
A year ago, Pluto was just a bright speck in the cameras of NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft, not much different than its appearances in telescopes since Clyde Tombaugh discovered the then-ninth planet in 1930.
But this week, in the journal Science, New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer's Pluto system flyby. "These five detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto – revealing the former 'astronomer's planet' to be a real world with diverse and active geology, exotic surface chemistry, a complex atmosphere, puzzling interaction with the sun and an intriguing system of small moons," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.
More from NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/science-papers-reveal-new-aspects-of-pluto-and-its-moons)
Pluto: On Frozen Pond
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when – thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto's atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface – liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world.
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160324
Pluto's 'Halo' Craters
Within Pluto's informally named Vega Terra region is a field of eye-catching craters that looks like a cluster of bright halos scattered across a dark landscape.
The region is far west of the hemisphere NASA's New Horizons spacecraft viewed during close approach last summer.
More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-halo-craters
New Horizons: Possible Clouds on Pluto, Next Target is Reddish
The next target for NASA's New Horizons mission -- which made a historic flight past Pluto in July 2015 -- apparently bears a colorful resemblance to its famous, main destination.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope data suggests that 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) about a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, is as red, if not redder, than Pluto. This is the first hint at the surface properties of the far-flung object that New Horizons will survey on Jan. 1, 2019.
Mission scientists are discussing this and other Pluto and Kuiper Belt findings this week at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) and European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) meeting in Pasadena, California.
"We're excited about the exploration ahead for New Horizons, and also about what we are still discovering from Pluto flyby data," said Alan Stern, principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now, with our spacecraft transmitting the last of its data from last summer's flight through the Pluto system, we know that the next great exploration of Pluto will require another mission to be sent there."
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6651