That same year, the New Horizons mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a journey of almost 10 years and three billion miles, becoming the first spacecraft to explore this far-away frontier.
Advertisement
Whether or not new insights bump Pluto back up to full planet status, Tombaugh would have been pleased, says another second cousin, Judith Bliss. The data will be quickly stored on two solid-state 8 gigabyte recorders, similar to flash memory cards in digital cameras.
When Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was a dot on a photograph. It wasn’t very big – a fraction of Pluto’s size – but it was enough to sow doubt in the minds of some astronomers that Pluto belonged here in the inner solar system, rather than there, in the trans-Neptunian region. (Credit: NASA)[/caption].
“We are coming up on the culmination of all this effort, all this planning”, said Joe Peterson, a science operations leader for the New Horizons mission. The eighth detector is like a CCD, but it works in the infrared.
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. In the meantime, though, it’s revealed new images of Pluto and Charon that reveal startling details.
How can they find out more about Pluto’s atmosphere?
Do you wish you could ride alongside the New Horizons spacecraft as it swings past Pluto on July 14? But their compositions seem to be radically different, and pinning down what they’re made of could help scientists understand how they formed – and why they act so strangely. Meanwhile, elements that are gases on Earth – like carbon dioxide and nitrogen – are able to form liquids or even solids at those temperatures. There’s also a “stardust counter” on board built and operated by University of Colorado students.
Oh, and guess what fuel New Horizons has been using to reach Pluto? Credit: NASA, from Pluto Flyby Press Kit (July 2015)[/caption].
He explained that, like numerous geological experts working with New Horizon imagery and data, he’s keenly interest in an enormous dark band that closely resembles that of a whale.
New Horizons is the first mission to the Kuiper Belt, a enormous zone of icy bodies and mysterious small objects orbiting beyond Neptune.
Alan Stern, the principal investigator on New Horizons, spoke to the BBC on Saturday to convey the mood inside his team ahead of the flyby. Instead, it will keep flying, heading deeper into the Kuiper Belt, a region that scientists think is filled with hundreds of small, icy objects. But what a glorious ride. The images were taken while New Horizons was just over 100 million kilometers from its target.
David A. Weintraub is a Professor of Astronomy at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs programs in the Communication of Science and Technology and in Scientific Computing.
Advertisement
The only planet in our solar system discovered by an American, Pluto actually is a mini solar system unto itself.
