NASAWhen it comes to landmark achievements in space exploration, tomorrow – July 14 – will be a date for the history books as the day humanity reached Pluto for the first time.
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Nine years later, New Horizons began its epic voyage. From creation, to construction, to execution, the New Horizons project has moved unusually fast-both literally and figuratively.
New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, a 20.8-centimetre (8.2-inch) telescopic camera, has surveyed Pluto and its surroundings for weeks in hopes of finding new moon.
“We’re close enough now that we’re just starting to see Pluto’s geology,” New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, reiterated in a statement.
The most recent image relayed from New Horizons and released on Saturday shows large, evenly spaced dark spots on the side of the Pluto that permanently faces its primary moon Charon. Other stowaways include an American flag and the state quarter of Maryland. The former planet Pluto – which was discovered 85 years ago but subsequently downgraded in 1992 and lost its status as the “ninth planet in the solar system – will be viewed for the first time”.
That means the spacecraft is flying autonomously, going through an elaborate set of pre-programmed maneuvers in which it will pivot and whirl its way through the Pluto system, studying not only the dwarf planet but three of its moons, including its unusually large moon Charon.
According to John Spencer, who is working with the South West research Institute in Colorado, the spacecraft is still at a stage of reaching the Pluto’s surface as it makes the closest fly-by on 14 July 2015. Thus, Pluto also represents the first encounter with an object at the doorstep of this enigmatic region of the solar system.
Over the following 16 months post-Pluto encounter, all the information acquired over these five short hours will be transmitted back to Earth. So we’re trying to put Pluto in the context of what we do know about the solar system.
When the craft closes in on this surface, seven instruments will soak up all the data they can with New Horizons zipping by at 49,600 kph (30,800 mph).
That delay became extra scary on July 4 when New Horizons suddenly went silent. “From this mission, we will learn basic scientific knowledge about the solar system”, said Ben-Yisrael.
New Horizons’ 3 billion-mile, 9½-year journey culminates Tuesday morning when the spacecraft zooms within 7,767 miles of Pluto.
The close-approach images will be spectacular; New Horizons should be able to discern features on Pluto as small as the ponds in New York City’s Central Park, mission team members have said. It is attached to New Horizons’ upper deck, on the inside of the probe.
If the distant Kuiper Belt object has snow-capped mountains, steep crevasses and towering ice cliffs, as some scientists have predicted, New Horizons will see them. As the probe approaches Pluto, the images are expected to be hundreds of times more detailed.
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But perhaps the main effect from this result is what it does for Pluto fans, because it finally settles the debate over which was bigger – Pluto or Eris.
