NASA has just released the most astounding images of Pluto and its moon, Charon, after having received data collected by New Horizons on its flyby missions. These pictures, uncompressed and without pixelation or blurriness, show us an amazing view of the dwarf planet’s surface, revealing Pluto’s landscape to be as complex as that of Mars.
Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for New Horizons, declares in a statement that these images, spectra and other data types will ultimately help researchers understand the origin and evolution of Pluto and its system for the first time. What’s lies ahead is not only the remaining 95% of data that’s still left in the spacecraft, but also the most important data: the highest resolution images and the most pivotal datasets. In other words, the real treasure trove is still waiting to be uncovered.
Varied Geology
The images, Stern adds, highlight a diversity and complexity in geological processes, which rival anything that has been seen in our solar system thus far. Pluto’s surface, for example, encompasses mountains, nitrogen ice flows and possible dunes, giving it much more diversity than was initially anticipated. Even Charon, pictured below, displays giant canyons:
New Horizons is broadcasting back data through NASA’s Deep Space Network, a series of large radio dishes in California, Spain and Australia, which serve a variety of spacecraft. The customary downlink rate ranges between 1 and 4 kilobits per second, and communication is far from instant. New Horizons is currently about 3 billion miles from planet Earth, so it takes about 4.5 hours to send a signal from the probe (currently moving at the speed of light) to Earth.
The Future of New Horizons — This is Only the Beginning
Members of the mission naturally have high hopes for the completed data. The success of the New Horizons mission requires a large investment in time and a lot of patience, but the results of the past two years surely indicate that the project was well worth the wait, according to Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist. The probe is not done generating data, and it will continue to give NASA and the world more information as it progresses on its mission to object 2014 MU69, one billion miles beyond Pluto.
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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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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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After traveling the 3 billion miles, after surviving the radioactive environment of space for 9 years, after carrying the ashes of the astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet, Clyde Tombaugh to his Pluto, the piano-sized probe New Horizons will be constantly transmitting data from its flyby for those of us to ogle and study. The information contained in New Horizons’ transmissions are categorized as low, medium and high priority. New Horizons officials say its final transmission will be in October or November of next year.
NEW HORIZONS EXIST BEYOND PLUTO
The probe was not sent out for the sole purpose of exploring the Plutonian system (i.e. Pluto and its moons). New Horizons loses several watts of power every year, but it still has enough power remaining to function for 20 additional years, and there’s plenty else to see in the outer reaches of our solar system.
TO THE KUIPER BELT
For starters, the spacecraft will penetrate even farther into the Kuiper Belt, a spheroid assemblage of asteroids encapsulating the entire solar system. The largest phenomenon in our system, the Kuiper Belt is host to over 100,000 miniature worlds we’ve never been to before.
Once beyond the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons will follow the voyage of Voyager 1 & 2, a pair of twin, tank-sized probes that gave us our first tour of the outer planets in the seventies and early eighties. Now New Horizons can also move into its mission’s final phase, “to explore the dep reaches of the heliosphere,” said principal investigator Alan Stern. He continues: “Eventually, we’ll get to a point where we can’t operate the primary spacecraft computer and the communications system. We’ve estimated that that point will be reached sometime in the mid 2030s, roughly 20 years from now…[o]ver those next 20 years, if a spacecraft continues to be healthy, it could operate and return scientific data.”
AND BEYOND
If the probe’s “health” is maintained, then perhaps it, like the Voyager probes, could be among the first human artifacts to leave our solar system, and enter the interstellar frontier, where it will eventually go cold, and enter a deep slumber as it drifts for an eternity.
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As of Tuesday, July 14th, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons mission has achieved a fly-by of Pluto, capturing images that excited so many people as it marks not only an important historical event, but also may segue Earth’s space programs into a new age of discovery and exploration. Pictures of Pluto that the spacecraft has captured will reach NASA mission control one Wednesday the 15th around 12 pm EST. Set your alerts.
Astronomical Revelations
NASA has already received a few images from New Horizons, but more and better pictures of Pluto will enlighten scientists even more. With the ones already back on Earth, though, it can be seen that there are several markings and dark spots on the surface.
These may be due to Pluto’s thick atmosphere creating mirages, so scientists are holding off on confirming what these spots and markings are. However, some have said that they look similar to other markings that can be found in our very own solar system. Experts suggest that they appear similar in structure to impact craters or even volcanoes based on the circular markings on the current pictures of Pluto.
It should be noted that the New Horizons’ trajectory has it flying past Pluto at a mere 6,200 miles (~9,978 kilometers), so while the craft isn’t landing on the planet, it is getting incredibly close and will yield pictures of Pluto that give scientists brand new information that will shatter expectations from the scientific community.
This Day is Marked in History
On this day, July 14th, 2015 every planet in the solar system has been explored at least once by a space probe.
Astronomers will finally have detailed information about every planet and know exactly what each one looks like. In a video posted to Facebook, the world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking expressed his congratulations to everyone involved in the New Horizons mission, “The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed. We explore because we are human, and we want to know. I hope that Pluto will help us on that journey. I will be watching closely, and I hope you will, too.”
The ashes of the man who first found Pluto back in 1930 were on New Horizons and were launched onto Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh made great strides in the field of astronomy, and now he will rest for eternity on his most prized discovery.
What We’ve Already Learned
Without having all of the photographs, scientists have already realized information they had not previously known. Because of the first set of new pictures of Pluto, scientists are theorizing that the planet may have preserved some cosmic ‘fingerprints’ from the beginning of the solar system from nearly 4 million years ago.
There is also evidence that Pluto and its moons were formed from the cataclysmic collision of two larger cosmic bodies. This is similar to a theory of how Earth and its moon were formed from the original body that Earth once was and the similar in size but now absent Theia.
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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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The New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on Pluto, and every day it sends fascinating new images of the dwarf planet that–as expected–are exceeding our expectations. The most recent photos show two distinct faces and a series of intriguing spots in full color. Earlier worries of lethal space debris have been reneged, much to the New Horizons’ NASA team’s relief.
IMAGE ORIENTATION
The newest images of Pluto and its moon Charon, captured by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and its Ralph Instrument, show the two bodies as they would appear to the naked eye, with half of Pluto imaged over its circular body (on the right). This would mean that what looks like the south pole is actually the equator.
INTRIGUING FEATURES TO NOTE
Around the equator, or what appears as the South Pole, are spots of about 300 miles (480 km) in diameter, with a surface area approximately the size of Missouri. These spots seem to have consistent size and spacing, and they trace a band across the dwarf planet. Their origin is still a mystery to scientists, but some answers may be revealed upon New Horizons’ arrival on July 14th.
“It’s a real puzzle – we don’t know what the spots are, and we can’t wait to find out,” Dr. Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced from Boulder, Colorado. He is also New Horizons’ principal investigator.
CHARON IS MYSTERIOUS, TOO
Another puzzle lies in wait in the form of finding out why and how Pluto differs so much from its dark and gray moon Charon. When two bodies form in space, they are generally composed of the same material, and so are expected to appear as such.
BACK TO PLUTO
Pluto’s color has been confirmed by these images. It is a brown planet, whose color is the result of “radiation chemistry acting on the methane and nitrogen ices there,” said Dr. Stern. But a stranger surprise is yet to come, for both the Lorri and Ralph Instrument are going to search for clouds.
CLOUDS ON PLUTO?
Science team postdoc Kelsi Singer of SwRI said “we’re looking for clouds in our images using a number of techniques…if we find clouds, their presence will allow us to track the speeds and directions of Pluto’s winds.”
Some artist renderings of what Pluto may look like from low orbit can really take one aback–thin, wispy systems of white contrails all but rotating across the brown and yellow landscape. If this surreal possibility turns out to be true, it could indicate that Pluto has a much more complex weather system than we’d originally thought.
NEW HORIZONS ITINERARY UPDATES
NASA gave the all clear for the spacecraft to continue its approach to the Plutonian system yesterday, after several weeks of scanning for dust clouds, rings, hidden moons or other interplanetary hazards posing an imminent threat to the probe. As a last ditch effort, the team even considered the possibility of using the large high gain antenna dish (used to communicate with us, on Earth) as a physical shield against debris. Space dust is lethal because, regardless of size, a particle travelling at 30,800 miles per hour (49,600km/h) would turn anything we’ve built into swiss cheese.
The New Horizons team engaged a 23 second thruster burn to increase the probe’s speed, but overall “we’re breathing a collective sigh of relief knowing that the way appears to be clear,” remarked Jim Green, director of NASA’s planetary science division. The New Horizons team was worried they’d have to adopt a Safe Haven by Other Trajectory (SHBOT), a decision they needed to have made by this week, but it turned out to be an unnecessary precaution.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The New Horizons team partially expected to detect new moons or rings, but the lack of either was a “bit of a scientific surprise,” to Dr. Stern. “As a scientist I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t spot additional moons to study, but as a New Horizons team member I am much more relieved that we didn’t find something that could harm the spacecraft,” added John Spencer of SwRI, leader of the New Horizons hazard analysis team. The possibility of a faint ring does exist, but it would be extremely sparse and almost invisible to equipment.
The path is open and the stage is set for New Horizons to make history in the age of interplanetary exploration in twelve days’ time.
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An update on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s mission: Its successfully allowed NASA to capture the first color movies of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon Charon.
PLUTO, NOW IN COLOR
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft snapped images of Pluto and Charon on nine occasions during a period from May 29-June 3 using its “Ralph” Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera. The blue, red, and near-infrared images were used to create the first movies of Pluto and its largest moon, and in near-true color.
The New Horizons team used the same set of images to create two videos—one showing a Pluto-centric view, and the other showing a barycentric view. As its name suggests, Pluto is centered in the Pluto-centric version, and Charon’s movements are shown in relation to Pluto’s position. The movements of both dwarf planet and its satellite are shown in the barycentric version, as they move around their shared center of gravity.
“It’s exciting to see Pluto and Charon in motion and in color,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. He continues, “Even at this low resolution, we can see that Pluto and Charon have different colors—Pluto is beige-orange, while Charon is grey. Exactly why they are so different is the subject of debate.”
A BINARY PLANET
Pluto’s discovery in 1930 makes it a relatively recent addition to our solar system. It was demoted from full planet status in 2006 when similar-sized objects were detected in the Kuiper Belt between Neptune and Pluto (Although Pluto is officially recognized as a dwarf planet, its status is debated, and some scientists still regard Pluto as an official planet).
Aside from its size, Pluto is special compared to other objects in our solar system because of its large moon Charon. According to NASA, planets in our solar system typically have a planet:moon mass ratio of 10,000:1. Pluto and Charon’s is 8:1, which puts the center-of-mass between the two objects outside the surface of these objects.
This special feature earns Pluto-Charon the title of binary planet. And this is the only recognized binary planet in our solar system.
EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN
The New Horizons spacecraft launched on January 19, 2006, and just began its study of Pluto in the summer of 2015.
This is the first reconnaissance mission to explore the far away world of Pluto. So New Horizons is providing scientists with valuable information about the dwarf planet that will hopefully shed light on the geology, atmosphere, and interior makeup of Pluto.
The spacecraft’s extended mission will explore other worlds in the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons is scheduled to make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015.
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Earth’s Moon has a consistent pattern of waning and waxing, but has anyone thought about the moons of other planets–dwarf or otherwise? In a recent study, Pluto’s moons had their movements closely observed and really their movements could be described as dancing–if rhythmic movement were any indication of that.
There’s been a fortunate amount of coverage on Pluto’s moons lately. They consist of Charon (the largest), Styx, Nix, Hydra and Kerberos. In a recent study, observable was Pluto and her moon’s strange rhythmic movements incomparable to the movements of any comparable planetary objects. Naturereports on this study’s strange finds.
The Dance Shared By Pluto and Pluto’s Moons
The performance itself involves two parts. First, Pluto and Charon partner. Mark Showalter, the author of the study describes this as looking like they are “locked together in their own waltz as if they are a dumbbell” with a rod connecting them.” Meanwhile, the smaller of Pluto’s moons circle the pair, slowly move toward them, unsteadily, simultaneously being pushed and pulled by larger Pluto and Charon. The movements are described to be very precise. The five moons interacted when they were near each other as well, but in different ways.
Showalter and University of Maryland’s Doug Hamilton, discovered that the smaller of Pluto’s moons are linked together by gravitational resonance. This describes why they orbit Pluto and Charon in synchrony.
The Space Community Looks Forward to Learning More on Pluto’s System Very Soon
This is interesting because it’s our solar systems first known binary planet system–except neither Pluto or Charon are technically full-blown planets. The study’s implications give us an idea of what could be happening in other distant solar and star systems concerning the planets, and the stars and moons that revolve around them.
Not to be forgotten: NASA’S New Horizons spacecraft will finally be able to shed greater light on Pluto’s moons in Pluto’s tight-knit system this upcoming July after nine-years of travel! The spacecraft will have been traveling 3 billion miles. To put it in perspective, when first New Horizons took off, Pluto was still considered a planet.
