NEW HORIZONS ON FINAL APPROACH TO PLUTO - http://clapway.com/2015/06/28/new-horizons-on-final-approach-to-pluto432/

The teams in charge of the interplanetary satellite New Horizons are burning the midnight oil in an attempt to correct the spacecraft’s trajectory and flight time. The ETA for these corrections was June 14th, so hopefully everything turns out okay when it reaches Pluto.

The director of space navigation and flight dynamics for KinetX Aerospace, Dr. Bobby Williams said this series of course corrections was just an early part of three advanced planned activities.

WHAT WILL NEW HORIZONS DO WITH PLUTO?

Every day, NASA releases images of Pluto, but the upcoming flyby means that New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera will finally be able to photograph the closest images ever taken of Pluto. This will be at a distance of approximately 7,750 miles from Pluto’s frigid crust. As such, Williams explained, these will be the most clear and focused images of Pluto ever, and things are only going to get better.

BUT WE DIDN’T COME HERE JUST FOR THE TOUR

New Horizons will also assist scientists hoping to estimate the mass of Pluto and its moons, a subject of long-standing curiosity among scientists. The only spacecraft that have been farther away from Earth are the twin probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched in the 1970s to study the outer-planets and the edges of our solar system. One passed by Jupiter and Saturn, only to slingshot up out of our solar system in a vertical vector, while the other followed its curve out, passing by Uranus and Neptune before wandering out into that massive abyss. The two are still transmitting data by radio.

New Horizon’s mission upon arrival is to investigate the unknown surface of Pluto, supplying more data with which to hopefully quell the decades-long debate about the categorical status of the little planet (many scientists believe Pluto to be too small, and with too little mass to qualify as a planet).

WHAT CAN WE LOOK AT NOW

We have been informed that the newest photos reveal a bright spot on Pluto’s polar cap. The meaning of this luminescence is still under investigation. Hopefully, the Plutonians are not alerted to New Horizons’ presence.

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NEW HORIZONS ON FINAL APPROACH TO PLUTO

NASA Pluto Probe New Horizons Safely on Course for Epic Flyby - http://clapway.com/2015/05/29/nasa-pluto-probe-new-horizons-safely-on-course-for-epic-flyby-234/

The NASA space probe known as New Horizons is on a smooth, safe road to Pluto during the last few weeks of its long and much publicized journey. New Horizons’ onboard long-range camera has been working overtime to try to snap a pic of anything that may cause trouble for the probe.

First hazard search images reveal no new threats to the spacecraft.

Things like undiscovered moons, rings, or other unexpected features could prove lethal to the small craft, since the collision speeds would be extremely high. Yet, after a primary scan, there are no new or unexpected features to threaten New Horizons or the health of this mission. The scan did pick up all five of Pluto’s known moons. Styx, Kerberos, Hydra, Nix, and Charon could all easily be seen, and the camera is apparently even good enough to detect a body just half as luminous as the dimmest of them, Styx. Thus, the team reasoned that any possible undiscovered moons or rings would have to be very small. A moon would likely be smaller than 3 miles in diameter, and a ring would have to be very narrow or faint, perhaps under a thousand miles wide.

In case a hazard is detected, the team has two options.

If a dangerous object is detected, the New Horizons team can do two possible things (or both). The first would be to divert the path of the probe to one of three alternate routes. This would only work until around the Fourth of July, after which it’s be too late to change the path. The second would be to point the high-gain antenna the probe uses forward, in hopes that it would act like a shield. Yet, the team will hopefully never have to test these scenarios.

The Pluto mission is set to give us what is by far our closest look at the dwarf planet.

The New Horizons probe is part of a NASA mission that is tasked with giving researchers the first ever close-up shots of the “ex-planet.” Whatever awesome new things we can learn about the dwarf planet come at a cost of $700 million and years of work. The craft has been flying since the beginning of January 2006, and has covered an astonishing 3 billion miles. At the rate it’s currently traveling, it’s closing in on pluto at 750,000 miles per day.

NASA Pluto Probe New Horizons Safely on Course for Epic Flyby