New Horizons Finds Flowing Ice On Pluto? - http://clapway.com/2015/08/13/new-horizons-finds-flowing-ice-102/

One month has passed since New Horizons finally made its flyby of Pluto, limning the surface in spectacular definition with its Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). The best part of this having happened a month ago is that these following months may be the greatest treat of the entire ordeal, because only after New Horizons sifts through its data for weeks, only after NASA develops and analyzes received telemetry and data are we to see the secrets of Pluto’s surface for ourselves.

NEW HORIZONS CARRIES ON

Recently, a new batch of close-ups was released by NASA which reveals evidence of eccentric ice flows across Pluto’s surface, which means the Earth is not the only body in this solar system with glacier-geology. New Horizon’s LORRI shows a major ice sheet that has glided over the dwarf planet’s surface in a way very similar to glacier movement on Earth.

Here on the 3rd rock from the sun, glaciers usually progress by surface flows round the bends of obstacles, toward the vertex of deepest depression, usually creating a sort of swirly surface, as viewed from above. Now these photos from New Horizons’ LORRI have shown us that such topological patterns are not unique to Earth.

GLACIER’S LOCATION

Scientists believe that this glacier-like movement could still be in motion, but it is difficult to determine if this is the case from the photographs alone. The ice flow flows from the center of Sputnik Planum, a smooth, craterless plain which lies in “the heart of the heart” of Pluto. This region, estimated to be no more than 100 million years old (roughly 1.4 times as long ago as the extinction event of the dinosaurs), is not only young, but also probably still undergoing geological change.

“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” pointed out mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I’m really smiling.”

ICE COMPOSITE COMPOSES PLAINS

Ice on Pluto’s heart-shaped plain is composed of mostly nitrogen, but there are also rich traces of carbon monoxide and methane. Ralph, New Horizons’ other instrument, showed that carbon monoxide levels in the ice gradually increases as the device is pointed towards the center of Pluto’s heart.

NEW HORIZONS FOR SEMANTICS?

In addition to eliminating Earth’s uniquity when it comes to glaciers, this recent discovery has led many to question the fundamentals of glaciers, such as whether glaciers of varying chemical compositions are still worthy of the designation “glaciers,” and whether the term can even signify extraterrestrial phenomena. But this isn’t an exercise in the philosophy of language, so we turn to the National Snow and Ice Data Center for a definition: Glaciers are an amalgam of fallen snow that’ve compressed into large, thickened ice masses over a good number of years. Since it is difficult to include nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ice into a list of phenomena formed by snow, both the media and scientists are perfectly happy using the term “glacier-like” to refer to the above described phenomena.

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New Horizons Finds Flowing Ice On Pluto?

Closeup Images of Pluto - http://clapway.com/2015/07/16/closeup-images-of-pluto878/

When New Horizons executed its flyby of Pluto on July 14th, 2015 at a distance of 47,800 miles (77,000 km), it snapped a series of hi-res, closeup images. The first ever, in fact. The two NASA revealed to us in a Live Stream conference yesterday, one closeup image of Pluto and the other of its moon, Charon, have given reason for the scientists to come up with new theories to how planets form.

PLUTO AND CHARON ARE ACTIVE PLANETS

The new photos show that both the dwarf planet and its moon Charon have recently been geographically active. From Pluto’s closeup image we can see massive ice mountains, while on Charon we can actually see a canyon so deep you can actually see through the edge of the planet (at about 2 o’clock, roughly 5 miles deep!).

“The most striking thing about this image is, we have not yet found a single impact crater on this region,” said John Spencer, member of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado during a news briefing this Wednesday. If you look again at the closeup image of Pluto, you may ask yourself why you didn’t notice that right away. This is very significant, because the presence (or absence) of craters indicated a planet’s crust’s age.

PLUTO’S SURFACE AS OLD AS DINOSAURS

“Just eyeballing it, we think it has to be probably less than 100 million years old,” estimated spencer, deputy leader of New Horizons’ geology and geophysics investigation (CGI) team. This means that Pluto’s geology was probably active while the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And that is very recent, on a cosmic scale. “It might be active right now. With no craters, you just can’t put a lower limit on how active it might be.”

To be clear, all of this new scientific knowledge was garnered from one photo of one percent of Pluto’s surface. Jeff Moore, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said of the surface: “[it’s] one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system.”

OTHER ACTIVE BODIES, OTHER EXPLANATIONS

A few other small planetary bodies in our solar system have shown ongoing geologic activity. Enceladus, a geyser-shooting moon of Saturn, and the hot and volcanic Jovian satellite Io. The difference is that these planets’ interiors are heated by the gravitational tugs of Saturn and Jupiter, respectively. This process is known as tidal heating.

“This can’t happen on Pluto, because there is no giant body that can deform it on a regular basis,” wondered Spencer. “This is telling us that you do not need tidal heating to power geologic activity on icy moons. That’s a really important discovery that we just made this morning,” he concluded in deadpan humor to applause of the audience.

The thing is that Pluto and Charon aren’t tugging on one another, though, because “Pluto and Charon are in tidal equilibrium,” objected Alan Stern. “Charon orbits equivalent of geosynchronous orbit, and it is also spinning at the same rate that pluto spins. So there is no significant change in tidal energy anymore.”

PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES

One hypothesis as to how Pluto and Charon have managed to remain active is by having never lost their internal radioactive heat for a much longer amount of time than scientists had estimated possible. There is also the possibility that both Charon and Pluto once possessed subsurface Oceans, like Europa, which froze so gradually that heat was continually released into either body’s crusts.

Whatever it is we continue to learn of the Plutonian system as images and data of this brief flyby continue to return to Earth, one thing is for certain: the cost and risk involved in sending this piano-sized probe to flyby Pluto was worth the quantity and significance of scientific knowledge we are gaining, and we know this with one closeup image of Pluto.

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Closeup Images of Pluto

New Horizons" New Images of Pluto Echoes Mars" Camera Debut - http://clapway.com/2015/07/15/new-horizons-new-images-of-pluto-echoes-mars-camera-debut324/

With all of the excitement in anticipation of the imminent arrival of Hi-Res photos of Pluto and its Moon Charon from New Horizons’ flyby yesterday, this is a golden opportunity to remember how planetary exploration by space probe began. Fifty years ago, on July 14th, 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 captured 23 closeup images of Mars, that dusty next-door neighbor of ours. It was the first time we had seen another planet so close.

NEW HORIZONS ECHOES MARINER 4

Just as we are about to echo with Pluto and New Horizons, the images arrived precisely one day after Mariner 4 successfully engaged its flyby of Mars. Fifty years later, we’re about to repeat the maneuver, in a cosmic dance that’s symphony to Mariner 4’s prelude.

Alan Stern, an academic expert at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, agrees: “You couldn’t have written a script that was better.” Just like Mariner 4, New Horizons is teasing science lovers, prudishly forcing us all to wait for hour after hour until the final unveiling occurs. One should note that today a debutante move faster; millennials aren’t waiting as long as the baby boomers did.

NEW IMAGES WILL COME QUICKER

This afternoon, NASA is receiving a smorgasbord of imagery and scientific data, which will all be transmitted to NASA headquarters in a matter of minutes. In 1965, however, each image Mariner 4’s television camera captured required 10 hours to be uploaded and transmitted.

“If someone had asked ‘What do you expect to see?’ we would have said ‘craters’ …[yet] the fact that craters were there, and a predominant land form, was somehow surprising,” reminisces Robert Leighton, Caltech geology professor, who dressed Marner with its camera, and its vast assemblage of instruments.

BEGINNINGS OF INTERPLANETARY EXPLORATION

Leighton and several more Caltech physicists, engineers and geologists were responsible for lifting the then-infantile NASA and its subordinate Jet Propulsion Laboratory out of the crib, and throwing it out the window hard enough to achieve orbit. woof.

John Grotzinger, chairman of Caltech’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences describes the atmosphere of the times: “These early flyby missions showed the enormous potential of Mars to provide insight into the evolution of a close cousin to Earth and stimulated the creation of a program dedicated to iterative exploration involving orbiters, landers and rovers.”

ALIEN AESTHETICS, HUMAN SENTIMENTS

Since Mariner 4 first graced Mars’ atmosphere, 19 probes have followed in kind, orbiting and landing on Mars. However, twenty-five other probes have failed. But the sacrifices were certainly not in vain, because the advent of imaging other planets coincided with our first true scientific enquiry into the planets, and sent the captivated the public at large with contradictory sentiments like the beauty in alienness.

Let’s enjoy Pluto, and celebrate history today.

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New Horizons" New Images of Pluto Echoes Mars" Camera Debut

New Horizons Carries Remains of Pluto"s Discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh - http://clapway.com/2015/07/12/new-horizons-carries-remains-of-plutos-discoverer-clyde-tombaugh567/

While we wait for New Horizons to begin its flyby of Pluto, there are some sentiments of the more Earthly persuasion for us to consider. Firstly, Clyde Tombaugh, the ashes of the man who first discovered that distant, icy world in its lonely dance with Charon 85 years ago, are contained in the spacecraft. His remains will have reached Pluto’s system on the fourteenth of this month.

WORTHY STORAGE

Also stored on New Horizons is the 1991 U.S. postage stamp nearing its end of use date in this country. It’s mantra–”Pluto Not Yet Explored”–is brazenly etched at bottom. There are also two state quarters, one of Florida, where the probe was launched, and also Maryland, HQ of New Horizons’ producers and flight control.

In fact, a total of nine lovely mementos are stored aboard the New Horizons, and this number was chosen intentionally.

A DEMOTED WAND

Upon New Horizons’ launch from Cape Canaveral on January 19th of 2006, Pluto was still officially the ninth planet in our solar system. Its present, demoted status as a dwarf planet was assigned seven months post-launch.

It was Tombaugh’s widow and two children who offered an ounce of the man’s ashes for his final journey to Pluto. The farm-boy-cum-astronomer’s ashes are sealed away in a 2-inch aluminum capsule inscribed with the following words:

“Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system’s ‘third zone.’ Adelle and Muron’s boy, Patricia’s husband, Annette and Alden’s father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997)”

TOMBAUGH’S FAMILY TO UNITE FOR NEW HORIZONS’ FLYBY

Annette Tombaugh-Sitze and her younger brother Alden are in their seventies, but still plan on being present at the flight operation base at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, when Tuesday’s historic flyby occurs. The two’s mother passed away in 2012 at ninety-nine years of age.

Annette spoke of the event in a NASA interview posted online: “I think my dad would be thrilled with the New Horizons. I mean, who wouldn’t be? When he looked at Pluto, it was just a speck of light.”

DETAILS OF CARGO

The Pluto-stamp mentioned above depicts the planet as a gray hue with orange flecks, which was an artist’s best rendering based on what NASA knew of the tiny planet pre-1991, which, to be earnest, didn’t amount to much. Only recently has New Horizons revealed the planet to be a copper-colored, icy and bright world. However, Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service said in an email last week that “[n]o stamp has ever traveled this far!”

A piece of SpaceShipOne has also been attached to New Horizons. SpaceShipOne was the first manned private space plane to reach suborbital flight back in 2004, winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

New Horizons also contains two U.S. flags and two CDs, the first of which contains photos of the New Horizons’ team members, the second contains the names of 434,738 names of the people who signed up online in advance.

 

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New Horizons Carries Remains of Pluto"s Discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh

New Horizons" Pluto Map Reveals Strange Bands and Patches - http://clapway.com/2015/07/08/new-horizons-reveals-strange-bands-and-patches987/

One could safely assume most readers didn’t covet their Moon or Mars Maps in their childhood. But there’s always a chance to make amends for your kids’. A new map of Pluto that scientists have constructed from images captured by the famed spacecraft New Horizons has just hit the proverbial press.

Pluto map is a flat representation made from spherical pieces

The map unravels visible pieces of the sphere onto a flat, projected representation, revealing more features scientists have begun to take note of in recent days. They include patches near the equator which alternate between light and dark, and a singular, long, dark band scientists have named “the whale.”

Moby Dick’s Darker Cousin is only the beginning in a string of photos and data

New Horizons, the spacecraft that captured Moby Dick’s darker cousin, is only seven days away from its groundbreaking flyby of Pluto. New Horizons will pass Pluto’s surface at an altitude of about 13,000km. In this first pass, it will snap a veritable plethora of images and other scientific data. But these first pictures of the dwarf planet will be of a sophistication of an entirely different order than those of the Moon, or even our first studies of Mars. New Horizons will capture 5,000 times the data that Mariner did during its visit to the Red Planet. Moreover, targeted areas on Pluto’s surface will be displayed at a resolution better than 100 meters per pixel.

Images available so far are of much lower resolution, being assembled from a combination of the probe’s high-resolution (black and white) LORRI camera and its lower-resolution color imager, which we lovingly refer to as Ralph. Even so, we can still see a slew of different characteristics on the dwarf planet.

A white area near the center of Pluto will be directly below New Horizons upon the probe’s closest pass. On the east side is a splotchy place that’s been the root of the most heated discussion to the present moment. No one seems to know what the blobby patches are, but every one of them is a few kilometers in diameter.

Whale’s “tail” has weird craterlike donut

In what’s called the whale’s “tail,” is an object seeming to take the form of a doughnut. This could actually be an impact crater or a volcano, but at this low resolution either interpretation is equally warranted, i.e., is really unwarranted.

New Horizons has totally recovered from its 4th of July weekend hiccup, when it accidentally entered protective safe mode and dropped its connection with Earth for over an hour. The engineers behind New Horizons’ software have stated they understand the cause of the computer glitch, and have ruled it out of the realm of possibility for the next few days. Now let’s hope the Plutonians haven’t hacked our probe.

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New Horizons" Pluto Map Reveals Strange Bands and Patches