The Hits Just Keep Coming!
Take a look at these four faces of Pluto, dated from just about a week ago and see how much MORE detail we can see. New Horizons is getting closer each second and the proximity is starting to really pay off! Even though they’re not crystal clear (yet) you can clearly see more detailed areas of bright and dark. The images, taken with the Long Rainge Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), give us a telescopic view of the dwarf planet at varying distances. The big thing you notice, as Alan Stern (PI for the New Horizons mission pointed out, is that there are clear evidence of discrete equatorial bright and dark regions. “We can also see that every face of Pluto is different and that Pluto’s northern hemisphere displays substantial dark terrains, though both Pluto’s darkest and its brightest known terrain units are just south of, or on, its equator. Why this is so is an emerging puzzle,” he said.
The comparison, released today with the latest images, really are just an appetite-whetter — although the science teams are wringing every bit of science out of every image they get. The reward is they get to see tantalizing hints of what will turn out to be a complex surface. The next step will be to figure out why the surface is the way it is, and with the flyby coming up, they’ll have ever-better images and data to help them figure it out. It’s a heck of a ride so far, so stay tuned! (Want more info on the images? Check out this page on the New Horizons site.)
Here’s a little animation to enjoy, too!
i love it why didnt voyager one or two fly by pluto…..
The Voyager missions had to take advantage of the best orbital trajectories to get the most amount of science; many decisions had to be made about what that science was going to be. Originally, the mission was aimed solely at Jupiter and Saturn, and that’s what Voyager 1 did. Voyager 2 visited Uranus and Neptune; for it to be aimed at Pluto, it’s “trajectory assist” would have had to take place “inside” Neptune, which of course would have resulted in the destruction of the spacecraft. Also, consider that some of the main objectives of both missions (such as the rings of Saturn, a visit past Titan), meant specific trajectory corrections that were incompatible with trying to get to Pluto. Finally, consider that Pluto wasn’t in a good position its own orbit with respect to the other planets, and getting there after visiting four other planets would have meant significant other changes to the trajectories of both Voyagers. Sometimes you just can’t get there from here. 😉
feels receiving more and more information about Pluto
lOVE IT
NASA moved beyond the
moon, sending the Mars
Pathfinder to that planet in
1996 to determine whether
life has ever existed there,
and if so, what it might
have been. In 2000, the
United States and Russia
established a permanent NASA
1996 to determine whether
life has ever existed there,
and if so, what it might
have been. In 2000, the
United States and Russia
established a permanent
human station in space.
The International Space
Station work on 16 different countries NASA.