I’m as guilty as anyone for anthropomorphizing Pluto — as well as spacecraft like New Horizons, which is currently preparing to fly by the dwarf planet. But since spacecraft are really just extensions of ourselves, perhaps I can be forgiven for my non-scientific projections.
But now I know I’m among friends.
A new song by folk musician Craig Werth called “Oh Pluto” is “inspired by NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto and the quest for knowledge and understanding in the human spirit,” says Werth. The song underscores how we want to “grow our understanding, to learn all that we can.”
A noble goal, indeed.
Look for some familiar faces in the video.
Werth is joined on “Oh Pluto” by other notables Christine Lavin, Emily Bindiger and Grammy-winner, Julie Gold.
New Horizons is also inspiring other works of art, such as poetry by our pal Stu Atkinson who says “Soon we will Know You; soon we will swoon to pin-sharp views.”
Check out our own Fraser Cain and the scientists from the New Horizon team as they discuss the imminent arrival of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto!
Artist's concept of NASA mission streaking over Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL
Artist’s concept of NASA mission streaking over ocean world of Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL
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At long last NASA is heading back to Jupiter’s mysterious moon Europa and doing so in a big way – because scientists believe it harbors an alien ocean of water beneath an icy crust and therefore is “one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life” beyond Earth.
Top NASA officials have now formally and officially green lighted the Europa ocean world robotic mission and given it the “GO” to move from early conceptual studies into development of the interplanetary spacecraft and mission hardware, to search for the chemical constituents of life.
“Today we’re taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a NASA statement.
The goal is to investigate the habitability of Europa’s subsurface ocean, determine if it possesses the ingredients for life and advance our understanding of “Are we Alone?”
“Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions,” said Grunsfeld.
“Therefore Europa is the most likely place to find life in our solar system today because we think there is a liquid water ocean beneath its surface.”
Video caption: Alien Ocean: NASA’s Mission to Europa. Could a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa have the ingredients to support life? Here’s how NASA’s mission to Europa would find out. Credit: NASA
After a thorough review of the mission concept, managers agreed that it “successfully completed its first major review by the agency and now is entering the development phase known as formulation
“It’s a great day for science,” said Joan Salute, Europa program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“We are thrilled to pass the first major milestone in the lifecycle of a mission that will ultimately inform us on the habitability of Europa.”
In a major milestone leading up to this mission development approval, NASA managers recently announced the selection of the nine science instruments that will fly on the agency’s long awaited planetary science mission to this intriguing world that many scientists suspect could support life, as I reported here last month.
“We are trying to answer big questions. Are we alone,” said Grunsfeld at the May 26 media briefing.
“The young surface seems to be in contact with an undersea ocean.”
This 12-frame mosaic provides the highest resolution view ever obtained of the side of Jupiter’s moon Europa that faces the giant planet. It was obtained on Nov. 25, 1999 by the camera onboard the Galileo spacecraft, a past NASA mission to Jupiter and its moons. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Planetary scientists have long desired a speedy to return on Europa, ever since the groundbreaking discoveries of NASA’s Galileo Jupiter orbiter in the 1990s showed that the alien world possessed a substantial and deep subsurface ocean beneath an icy shell that appears to interact with and alter the moon’s surface in recent times.
NASA’s Europa mission would blastoff perhaps as soon as 2022, depending on the budget allocation and rocket selection – whose candidates include the heavy lift Space Launch System (SLS) now under development to launch astronauts on deep space expedition to the Moon, Asteroids and Mars.
The solar powered Europa probe will go into orbit around Jupiter for a three year mission in order to minimize exposure to the intense radiation region that could harm the spacecraft.
The Europa mission goal is to investigate whether the tantalizing icy Jovian moon, similar in size to Earth’s moon, could harbor conditions suitable for the evolution and sustainability of life in the suspected ocean.
It will be equipped with high resolution cameras, spectrometers and radar, several generations beyond anything before to map the surface in unprecedented detail and determine the moon’s composition and subsurface character. And it will search for subsurface lakes and seek to sample erupting vapor plumes like those occurring today on Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus.
There will many opportunities for close flybys of Europa during the three year primary mission to conduct unprecedented studies of the composition and structure of the surface, icy shell and oceanic interior.
“During the three year mission, the orbiter will conduct 45 close flyby’s of Europa,” Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, told Universe Today.
“These will occur about every two to three weeks.”
The close flyby’s will vary in altitude from 16 miles to 1,700 miles (25 kilometers to 2,700 kilometers).
Europa rising. The icy moon hangs above Jupiter cloud tops in a @NASANewHorizons image from 2007. Credit: NASA
The mission currently has a budget of about $10 million for 2015 and $30 Million in 2016. Over the next three years the mission concept will be further defined.
The mission will be managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California and is expected to cost in the range of at least $2 Billion or more.
The nine science instruments are described in my earlier story- here. They will be developed and built by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL); JPL; Arizona State University, Tempe; the University of Texas at Austin; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio and the University of Colorado, Boulder.
This artist’s rendering shows a concept for a future NASA mission to Europa in which a spacecraft would make multiple close flybys of the icy Jovian moon, thought to contain a global subsurface ocean. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Right now there is another NASA probe bound for Jupiter, the solar poweredJuno orbiter that will investigate the origin of the gas giant. But Juno will not be conducting any observations or flyby’s of Europa.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
New Horizons infographic about the Pluto encounter.
Are you ready for New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto? The science and engineering team reports they are ready for action, with the spacecraft on track and all systems functioning, with closest approach on July 14, 2015.
To get the rest of us ready, the National Space Society has put together a stirring video of the New Horizons mission. It was directed and produced by Erik Wernquist, who created another stirring video last year, Wanderers, which looks to the future of solar system exploration. For this new video, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern served as advisor.
“As both an NSS member and the Principal Investigator of New Horizons, I’m excited about this beautiful film – and very appreciative of the efforts of NSS and its sponsors to create this. It really is stirring; I hope you’ll think so too,” said Stern.
You can read the latest update from the New Horizons team here, which includes information about the third and final far encounter science phase, called Approach Phase 3, which runs until seven days before Pluto close approach. Additionally, the team is on the lookout for possible hazards for the spacecraft, e.i., new moons, rings or other space debris that might present hazards to the fast-moving spacecraft when it flies through the Pluto system. They’ve been analyzing the latest images from the spacecraft and so far it looks all clear.
“Every day we break a new distance record to Pluto, and every day our data get better,” said Stern. “Nothing like this kind of frontier, outer solar system exploration has happened since Voyager 2 was at Neptune way back in 1989. It’s exciting–come and watch as New Horizons turns points of light into a newly explored planetary system and its moons!”
Additionally, @NewHorizons2015 just tweeted out a great infographic about the encounter:
Hubble Finds Smallest Kuiper Belt Object. Credit: NASA
Dr. Mike Brown is a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. He’s best known as the man who killed Pluto, thanks to his team’s discovery of Eris and other Kuiper Belt Objects. We asked him to help us explain this unusual region of our solar system.
Soon after Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh on February 18th, 1930, astronomers began to theorize that Pluto was not alone in the outer Solar System. In time, they began to postulate the existence of other objects in the region, which they would discover by 1992. In short, the existence of the Kuiper Belt – a large debris field at the edge of the Solar System – was theorized before it was ever discovered.
Definition:
The Kuiper Belt (also known as the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt) is a region of the Solar System that exists beyond the eight major planets, extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, in that it contains many small bodies, all remnants from the Solar System’s formation.
But unlike the Asteroid Belt, it is much larger – 20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. As Mike Brown explains:
The Kuiper Belt is a collection of bodies outside the orbit of Neptune that, if nothing else had happened, if Neptune hadn’t formed or if things had gone a little bit better, maybe they could have gotten together themselves and formed the next planet out beyond Neptune. But instead, in the history of the solar system, when Neptune formed it led to these objects not being able to get together, so it’s just this belt of material out beyond Neptune.
Discovery and Naming:
Shortly after Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto, astronomers began to ponder the existence of a Trans-Neptunian population of objects in the outer Solar System. The first to suggest this was Freckrick C. Leonard, who began suggesting the existence of “ultra-Neptunian bodies” beyond Pluto that had simply not been discovered yet.
That same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto “may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered.” In 1943, in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Kenneth Edgeworth further expounded on the subject. According to Edgeworth, the material within the primordial solar nebula beyond Neptune was too widely spaced to condense into planets, and so rather condensed into a myriad of smaller bodies.
In 1951, in an article for the journal Astrophysics, that Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper speculated on a similar disc having formed early in the Solar System’s evolution. Occasionally one of these objects would wander into the inner Solar System and become a comet. The idea of this “Kuiper Belt” made sense to astronomers. Not only did it help to explain why there were no large planets further out in the Solar System, it also conveniently wrapped up the mystery of where comets came from.
In 1980, in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Uruguayan astronomer Julio Fernández speculated that a comet belt that lay between 35 and 50 AU would be required to account for the observed number of comets.
Following up on Fernández’s work, in 1988 a Canadian team of astronomers (team of Martin Duncan, Tom Quinn and Scott Tremaine) ran a number of computer simulations and determined that the Oort cloud could not account for all short-period comets. With a “belt”, as Fernández described it, added to the formulations, the simulations matched observations.
The bodies in the Kuiper Belt. Credit: Don Dixon
In 1987, astronomer David Jewitt (then at MIT) and then-graduate student Jane Luu began using the telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to search the outer Solar System. In 1988, Jewitt moved to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, and Luu later joined him to work at the University’s Mauna Kea observatory.
After five years of searching, on August 30th, 1992, Jewitt and Luu announced the “Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object” (15760) 1992 QB1. Six months later, they discovered a second object in the region, (181708) 1993 FW. Many, many more would follow…
In their 1988 paper, Tremaine and his colleagues referred to the hypothetical region beyond Neptune as the “Kuiper Belt”, apparently due to the fact that Fernández used the words “Kuiper” and “comet belt” in the opening sentence of his paper. While this has remained the official name, astronomers sometimes use the alternative name Edgeworth-Kuiper belt to credit Edgeworth for his earlier theoretical work.
However, some astronomers have gone so far as to claim that neither of these names are correct. For example, Brian G. Marsden – a British astronomer and the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – claimed that “Neither Edgeworth nor Kuiper wrote about anything remotely like what we are now seeing, but Fred Whipple (the American astronomer who came up with the “dirty snowball” comet hypothesis) did”.
The layout of the solar system, including the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, on a logarithmic scale. Credit: NASA
Furthermore, David Jewitt commented that, “If anything … Fernández most nearly deserves the credit for predicting the Kuiper Belt.” Because of the controversy associated with its name, the term trans-Neptunian object (TNO) is recommended for objects in the belt by several scientific groups. However, this is considered insufficient by others, since this can mean any object beyond the orbit of Neptune, and not just objects in the Kuiper Belt.
Composition:
There have been more than a thousand objects discovered in the Kuiper Belt, and it’s theorized that there are as many as 100,000 objects larger than 100 km in diameter. Given to their small size and extreme distance from Earth, the chemical makeup of KBOs is very difficult to determine.
However, spectrographic studies conducted of the region since its discovery have generally indicated that its members are primarily composed of ices: a mixture of light hydrocarbons (such as methane), ammonia, and water ice – a composition they share with comets. Initial studies also confirmed a broad range of colors among KBOs, ranging from neutral grey to deep red.
This suggests that their surfaces are composed of a wide range of compounds, from dirty ices to hydrocarbons. In 1996, Robert H. Brown et al. obtained spectroscopic data on the KBO 1993 SC, revealing its surface composition to be markedly similar to that of Pluto, as well as Neptune’s moon Triton, possessing large amounts of methane ice.
Artist’s comparison of the eight largest Kuiper Belt Objects. Credit: Lexicon/NASA Images
Water ice has been detected in several KBOs, including 1996 TO66, 38628 Huya and 20000 Varuna. In 2004, Mike Brown et al. determined the existence of crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate on one of the largest known KBOs, 50000 Quaoar. Both of these substances would have been destroyed over the age of the Solar System, suggesting that Quaoar had been recently resurfaced, either by internal tectonic activity or by meteorite impacts.
Keeping Pluto company out in the Kuiper belt, are many other objects worthy of mention. Quaoar, Makemake, Haumea, Orcus and Eris are all large icy bodies in the Belt. Several of them even have moons of their own. These are all tremendously far away, and yet, very much within reach.
Exploration:
On January 19th, 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons space probe for the sake of studying Pluto, its moons and one or two other Kuiper Belt objects. As of January 15th, 2015, the spacecraft began its approach to the dwarf planet, and is expected to make a flyby by July 14th, 2015. When it reaches the area, astronomers are expecting several interesting photographs of the Kuiper Belt as well.
Even more exciting is the fact that surveys of other solar systems indicate that our Solar System isn’t unique. Since 2006, there have been other “Kuiper Belts” (i.e. icy debris belts) discovered around nine other star systems. These appear to fall into two categories: wide belts, with radii of over 50 AU, and narrow belts (like our own Kuiper Belt) with radii of between 20 and 30 AU and relatively sharp boundaries.
According to infrared surveys, an estimated 15-20% of solar-type stars are believed to have massive Kuiper-Belt-like structures. Most of these appear to be fairly young, but two star systems – HD 139664 and HD 53143, which were observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006 – are estimated to be 300 million years old.
Vast and unexplored, the Kuiper Belt is the source of many comets, and is believed to be the point of origin for all periodic or short-period comet (i.e. ones with an orbit lasting 200 years or less). The most famous of these is Halley’s Comet, which has been active for the past 16,000–200,000 years.
Future of the Kuiper Belt:
When he initially speculated about the existence of a belt of objects beyond Neptune, Kuiper indicated that such a belt probably did not exist anymore. Of course, subsequent discoveries have proven this to be wrong. But one thing that Kuiper was definitely right about was the idea that these Trans-Neptunian Objects won’t last forever. As Mike Brown explains:
We call it a belt, but it’s a very wide belt. It’s something like 45 degrees in extent across the sky – this big swath of material that’s just been churned and churned by Neptune. And these days, instead of making a bigger and bigger body, they’re just colliding and slowly grinding down into dust. If we come back in another hundred million years, there’ll be no Kuiper Belt left.
Given the potential for discovery, and what up-close examination could teach us about the early history of our Solar System, many scientists and astronomers look forward to the day when we can examine the Kuiper Belt in more detail. Here’s hoping that the New Horizons mission is just the beginning of future decades of research into this mysterious region!
This set of computer modeling illustrations of Pluto’s moon Nix shows how the orientation of the moon changes unpredictably as it orbits the “double planet” Pluto-Charon.
Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Showalter (SETI)/G. Bacon (STScI)
Simulation of Pluto’s moon Nix sped up so that one orbit takes 2 seconds instead of 25 days.
Wobbling and tumbling end-over-end like a badly thrown football, Pluto’s moons are in a state of orbital chaos, say scientists. Analysis of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows that two of Pluto’s moons, Nix and Hydra, wobble unpredictably. If you lived on either, you’d never know when and in what direction the Sun would rise. One day it would pop up over your north horizon, the next over the western. Every sunset would be like a proverbial snowflake — not a single one the same.
Watch the video, and you’ll see what I mean. Not only does the moon totter, but the poles flip. If there was ever a solar system body to meet the criteria of end-of-the-world, doomsday crowd, Nix is it. The moons wobble because they’re embedded in the bizarro gravity field of the Pluto-Charon duo. Charon is officially the dwarf planet’s largest moon, but the two bodies act more like a double planet because Charon’s so huge.
OK, it’s only 750 miles (1,212 km) in diameter, but that’s half as big as Pluto. Imagine if our moon was twice as big as it is now, and you get the picture.
Charon is large compared to Pluto, so they orbit about their common center of gravity located in the space between the two bodies. Credit: Wikipedia
As the duo dances an orbital duet about their common center of gravity, their variable gravitational field sends the smaller moons tumbling erratically. The effect is enhanced even more by their irregular and elongated shapes. It’s likely Pluto’s other two moons, Kerberos and Styx, are in a similar situation.
Because their moment to moment motions are essentially unpredictable, scientists describe their behavior is chaotic. Saturn’s moon, Hyperion, also tumbles chaotically.
Pluto (upper right) and its largest moon Charon form a “double planet” as seen in this photo taken by NASA’s New Horizons probe which is set to make a close flyby of the Pluto system on July 14. Credit: NASA / NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute
The discovery was made by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute and Doug Hamilton of the University of Maryland using the Hubble Space Telescope and published in today’s issue of the journal Nature. Showalter also found three of Pluto’s moons are presently locked together in resonance, meaning there’s a precise ratio for their orbital periods.
“If you were sitting on Nix, you would see that Styx orbits Pluto twice for every three orbits made by Hydra,” said Hamilton.
That’s not all. If you’ve ever grilled with charcoal, you’d have a good idea what Kerberos looks like. Dark as one those briquettes. The other moons are as bright as sand because they’re mostly made of ice. Astronomers had thought that material blasted off the moons by meteorite impacts should make them all the same basic tone, so what’s up with Kerberos? No one knows.
This illustration shows the scale and comparative brightness of Pluto’s small satellites. The surface craters are for illustration only and are not real. Credits: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)
Pluto’s moons are thought to have formed during a collision long ago between the dwarf planet and a similar-sized object. The smash-up created lots of smaller bodies that eventually took up orbits about the present-day Pluto. Outside of Charon, the biggest leftover, the other moons measure in the tens of miles across. The four little ones — Nix, Styx, Kerberos and Hydra — were discovered with the Hubble scope during surveys to better map the Pluto system before New Horizons arrives next month. No one would be surprised if even more itty-bitty moons are found as we draw ever closer to the dwarf planet.
A view of Pluto Safari on an iPhone. Image via Simulation Curriculum.
If you’re like us, you’ve been following the news closely as the New Horizons mission speeds towards Pluto. Want to follow it even closer? Check out the free Pluto Safari app now available from the developers that brought us the award winning astronomy app ‘SkySafari 4.’ It is available in both iOS and Android.
The fully interactive Pluto Safari provides a countdown in time and distance for when New Horizons will reach Pluto on July 14, 2015. It will also give you the latest position of New Horizons and Pluto, providing 3-D views of the Solar System and the Pluto system, as well as 3-D models of the spacecraft. By using the Time Controls, you can run through the mission, backwards or forwards, to see the mission step-by-step. Just so you don’t get lost in time and space, the status bar always displays the current date, time and location.
Views of Pluto Safari on iPads. Image via Simulation Curriculum.
The app will also show you where Pluto is located in the sky from your location. Who doesn’t want to look up in the exact spot where Pluto is, knowing that New Horizons is there too? But the app allows you to do even more: the simulator provides an accurate depiction of the sky, and you can touch and drag to change the direction you are looking, and zoom in and out to adjust your field of view.
Pedro Braganca from Simulation Curriculum, the company that developed the app told Universe Today that the info on the app will be updated throughout the mission as new data becomes available. Simulation Curriculum created the 3D model of the spacecraft, but the surface texture maps for Pluto and Charon were created by Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute.
“The maps are both scientifically accurate (from Hubble data) and aesthetically pleasing,” Braganca said via email. “Obviously we’ll replace these textures with the ‘real’ Pluto map whenever that gets released post-flyby.”
Pluto Safari on Android devices. Image via Simulation Curriculum.
If you’re newbie and only now hearing about the New Horizons mission, you can go back in time to review the mission since it launched on January 19, 2006, and explore all the mission milestones in the interactive Solar System Simulator. There’s also a detailed multimedia guide to Pluto and its history.
Want to give a piece of your mind to the IAU for the controversial demotion Pluto to a dwarf planet? The app has a “poll” that also allows you to weigh in on Pluto’s planet status.
You’ll also get alerts to the latest news from New Horizons on the milestones, data, and discoveries.
Pluto Safari’ has interactive educational activities. Image via Simulation Curriculum.Additionally, Pluto Safari has interactive educational information for all ages.
Braganca shared an interesting story about they worked with JPL to get even intricate details in the app correct.
“On the orbital/trajectory data side, when we were developing the simulation of the Pluto-New Horizons encounter, we were unable to show New Horizons passing through Pluto’s shadow,” he said via email. “Our calculations appeared to be correct, and we were using the latest position data available for Pluto/NH from JPL Horizons – so it was a bit of a mystery. To help us figure this out, we contacted Jon Giorgini, Senior Analyst at JPL. Jon confirmed that the latest New Horizons maneuver was not yet modeled in the spacecraft reference trajectory. There was also a couple thousand km uncertainty in the Pluto system barycentric position, as determined from the ground. Jon updated the JPL Horizon data to the latest available information and we were then in close agreement with the Pluto-encounter with the new values.”
You can use the app from the desktop on your computer if want a larger view than on your phone by going to the app’s website, PlutoSafari.com.
To download Pluto Safari for iOS 7 and later, click here.
To download Pluto Safari for Android 4.1 and later, click here.
As New Horizons gets ever-closer to Pluto, Pluto Safari provides a great way to feel like part of the mission.
“The New Horizons Pluto flyby is a rare chance for science to touch the general public,” said Braganca. “With a free app, we’re capturing a new generation at this teachable moment. The Voyager missions of the 1980s inspired engineers who went on to develop today’s mobile technologies. Who knows we might inspire today’s young learners to accomplish 30 years from now?”
These images show Pluto in the latest series of New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015. Hints of possible complex surface geology and the polar cap first seen in April are visible. Credit: NASA
Hey Pluto, it’s great to see your face! Since sending its last batch of images in April, NASA’s New Horizons probe lopped off another 20 million miles in its journey to the mysterious world. Among the latest revelations: the dwarf planet displays a much more varied surface and the bright polar cap discovered earlier this spring appears even bigger.
Comparison of the April image of one hemisphere of Pluto with the same hemisphere photographed in May. The photos have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down), as shown schematically in the center panel. Between April and May, Pluto grew larger as the spacecraft got closer, with Pluto’s apparent size increasing by approximately 50%. Pluto rotates around its axis every 6.4 Earth days; this and the images below show the variations in Pluto’s surface features during its rotation. Credit: NASA
“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.
Compare Pluto’s polar cap (white spot at top of the globe), first seen in April (left) with the latest image taken on May 10. Approximately the same face of Pluto is shown in both images. The cap’s extent varies with longitude. Credit: NASA
Mission scientists caution against over-interpreting some of the smaller details. The photos have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which strips away the out-of-focus information to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally add “false” details or artifacts, so the smallest features in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks.
Pluto compared on April 16, 2015 and May 12. Credit: NASA
Compared to recent photos of Ceres, the other dwarf planet in the limelight this season, Pluto shows only light and dark blotches. That’s how Ceres started out too. All those variations in tone and texture suggest a fascinating and complex surface. And it’s clear that the polar cap — whatever it might ultimately be — is extensive and multi-textured. The images were taken from a little less than 50 million miles (77 million km) away or about the same distance Mars is from Earth during a typical opposition.
New Horizons current position and particulars on May 28, 2015. Credit: NASA
Watch for dramatic improvements in the images as New Horizons speeds toward its target, covering 750,000 miles per day until closest approach on July 14. By late June, they’ll have four times the resolution; during the flyby that will improve to 5,000 times. The spacecraft is currently 2.95 billion miles from Earth. Light, traveling at 186,00o miles per second, requires 8 hours and 47 minutes – the length of a typical work day – to make the long round trip.
The overview of the New Horizon journey to the binary system of Pluto and Charon. The NASA probe is now surpassing Hubble imagery. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
The latest set of images from the long range imager, LORRI, on New Horizons now reveals surface features. At a press conference today, exhilarated NASA scientists discussed what the images are now suggesting. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Today, a trio of NASA scientists expressed their exhilaration with the set of new Pluto images released by the New Horizons team. “Land Ho” exclaimed Dr. Alan Stern as he first tried to explain where they are on their long journey. Nearly 500 years ago, not even Magellan on a three year journey to circumnavigate the Earth waited so long. A ten year journey is beginning to reveal fascinating new details of the dwarf planet Pluto, once the ninth planet of our Solar System. The latest images show surface features on Pluto suggesting polar caps.
A team effort that Dr. Weaver said called upon leading experts to resolve these newest details of Pluto’s surface. The inset at left shows schematically the geographic relationship of the two bodies as they orbit each other. The inset at right shows surface details at 3x maximum resolution. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
The NASA press conference took place this afternoon, anchored by Dr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate who quickly turned over the discussion to the project scientist of the New Horizons mission, Dr. Alan Stern from the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio, Texas. Grunsfeld began by stating NASA’s mission – “to explore, discover and inspire” and added that New Horizons is certainly executing these prime objectives.
The overview of the New Horizon journey to the binary system, Pluto and Charon, and beyond. The NASA probe is now surpassing Hubble imagery. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Alan Stern started off by expressing his excitement with the latest results from the long range telescope on board New Horizons, LORRI, but emphasized he represents a team effort, the culmination of decades of work.
With just 11 weeks remaining and now 98% of the way to Pluto, the latest set of images from LORRI have now revealed details better than the best that was previously attainable – from the Hubble Space Telescope. Most incredible are indications of polar caps on the dwarf planet Pluto.
Until now, the Hubble space telescope had shown tantalizing but mottled features of the surface of Pluto (Photo Credit: NASA)
Dr. Stern, stated that the 25th Anniversay of the Hubble mission has also functioned as a segue to what is about to unfold from New Horizons. Until now, the best images of Pluto’s surface had been wrestled out of images from Hubble with computer processing. Yet, at the present distance New Horizons remains, his team is still relying on image processing to reveal these first surface details.
The gravitational tug of war of the unique binary system has forced both small bodies to forever face each other, similar to how our Moon always faces the Earth. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Dr. Stern stated how remarkable the Pluto-Charon system is. The earlier set of LORRI images from 2014 had shown the gravitational dance of the two small bodies. He stated that they are truly a binary system and a type we have never explored before. Pluto-Charon is a dual synchronous, tidally locked system. Dr. Stern explained that the Earth, close-in to the Sun, and their space probe New Horizons, now on its final approach, is viewing the sunlit side of Pluto and Charon.
The system is tipped over relative to its orbital plane around the Sun. Dr. Stern stated, “it is like watching Pluto rotate on a spit.” He said that we are nearly seeing it face on; similar to an observer hovering far above the Earth’s polar cap and looking down upon the Earth-Moon system. The orbits of the two bodies, as seen in the LORRI image sequence (animations, above), appear elliptical (oval), however, due to the extreme and final state of this binary system, the orbits are perfect circles; the eccentricities are zero! New Horizons is just approaching slightly off center.
Images of the New Horion space probe shows its compactness, necessarily to minimize weight, volume, power demands and achieve the high velocity necessary to reach Pluto in nine years. Af left the instruments are shown included the long range imager, LORRI. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Dr. Stern continued and explained how this latest set is now showing surface features on Pluto. The features “are suggesting the presence of polar caps”, however he also emphasized that it remains only suggestive until New Horizons can deliver more details, that is, higher resolution, color imagery from the Ralph imager and spectroscopic data (Ralph and Alice imaging spectrometers) to reveal composition. Dr. Stern turned over the press conference to Dr. Hal Weaver of John Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, the lead scientist for the LORRI instrument.
LORRI, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, shown through details of a schematic. (Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
LORRI as Dr. Weaver explained is a state-of-the-art instrument. A fixed focus telescopic camera, functional from room temp down to 180 degees Fahrenheit below zero and utilizes an 8 inch primary mirror. The optical quality is extraordinary but the light gathering power is the same as one has in an amateur 8 inch telescope such as offered by Meade or Celestron. Still further, Dr. Weaver stated that LORRI is also extremely efficient and ligthweight, using less than 5 watts of power and weighing less than 20 lbs.
New York City’s Manhattan is shown as an example of the resolving power the Ralph multi-spectral imager will have at closest approach to Pluto and Charon (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Dr. Weaver explained how the raw images from LORRI are presently little more than blotches of light, unspectacular at first glance, but with image processing, the details discussed today are revealed. The New Horizons team employed world-class experts in the technique of Image Deconvolution. It was again Hubble that spawned “a cottage industry”, over 20 years ago, including one expert – Todd Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Lauer and others took on the challenge of extracting quality imagery from the Hubble space telescope as it struggled with the astigmatism accidentally built into its optical system. A NASA Space Shuttle mission delivered and inserted a corrective lens into Hubble which has made its 25 years of service possible.
Without the imaging processing technique of deconvolution, the latest images of Pluto are mere blotches. Dr. Weaver credited experts born from the Hubble astigmatism from 20 years ago. (Photo Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
And the New Horizons’ processed images are now slightly better than Hubble and will just get much better. From the Q&A with the press. Weaver explained that while the images show more detail, Earth-based and Hubble images remain more light sensitive. Hubble sets an upper limit to the size of any remaining moons to be discovered. Weaver stated that by June, New Horizons’ LORRI will exceed the light sensitivity limits of Hubble. If there are more moons to be found, June will be the month.
An artist’s illustration of Pluto. With a tenuous atmosphere that has so far defied explanations, New Horizons is altogether revealing a light red – peach – colored surface but with large contrasting areas of white and dark red. (Illust. Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Through the Q&A, Dr. Stern stated that an extraordinary aspect of Pluto’s atmosphere is that the planet’s atmosphere has continued to expand despite having passed a point in its orbit at which it should be freezing and condensing onto its surface. The atmosphere expanded 200 to 300% in the last decade. With the limited observations, Stern and other Pluto experts surmise that there is a lag in the climate akin to how our hottest months lag the beginning of Summer by a couple of months. Perhaps, a latent heat stored up in the near surface has continued to vaporize frozen gases thus building up the atmosphere more than first expected.
The composition of the dwarf planet’s surface was discussed. Most evident in Earth-based spectroscopy is that there is molecular nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane. Stern stated they these species of molecules could explain the bright and dark spots of the surface. However, he emphasized that Pluto is composed of 70% rock by mass and the remaining is ice. Charon stands in remarkable contrast to Pluto. Chraon has primarily water and ammonia hydrates on its surface; no detectable atmosphere (so far). Charon’s appearance is much more uniform and bland. Altogether, Stern said that experts call this the Pluto-Charon dichotomy.
The present approach at 60 million miles to Pluto is just the beginning of the story of New Horizons’ study of the primary targets. This press conference illustration explains near-term plans. (Illust. Credit: NASA/New Horizons)
Dr. Stern near the end of the press conference restated that this is truly “my meet Pluto moment.” New Horizons is like a plane on its final approach to touchdown but New Horizons cannot slow down. There are no retro-rockets, no propulsion onboard that can slow down the probe on its trek to escape the gravity of the Sun. The probe will join the Pioneer and Voyager space probes as the only Human-made objects to leave the Solar System. With its final approach, with every day, Pluto and Charon closes in as Dr. Stern and Dr. Weaver explained, Pluto’s image will fill the full breadth of the imaging detector. Details on its surface will be equivalent to high resolution images of New York’s Manhattan (figure, above) showing details such as the ponds in Central Park.
To continue following the latest release of images from New Horizons go to http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/lorri-gallery.
