Category Archives: Pluto

New Horizons mission, Pluto

Pluto’s On the Map!

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Meet the Whale and the Donut

The Pluto map from the New Horizons LORRI instrument. The darkest material lies along Pluto's equator. The dark region on the left is called "the whale".Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI.
The Pluto map from the New Horizons LORRI instrument. The darkest material lies along Pluto’s equator. The dark region on the left is called “the whale”. The rounded feature on its tail is called the “donut”. Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI.

The hits just keep on coming from New Horizons, showing us more detailed images and now a map of the distant world’s surface. This shows surface reflectance (that is, the variations in reflection of sunlight by material on the surface), combined with color information.  The dark areas could be organic-rich ice that has been darkened by sunlight, while the bright regions seem to show “fresher” ice made of methane or nitrogen, and possibly even carbon dioxide. The brighter areas don’t appear to have been darkened quite so much. Or, maybe there’s something else going on here, something we’ll hear more about as the team gets more images and spectral science from the spacecraft over the next week or so. (Like, how does “fresher” ice get to the surface?)

You can see a whale-shaped region at the lower left (which is really along the equatorial region), and a heart-shaped region to its right that the whale appears to be swimming into. The dark region just above the whale has a brighter spot in it; that’s the pole of the planet.

What intrigues me even more are the mottled regions in the right half of the map. What’s going on there?  And, why is there a “donut”-shaped region on the far left, about where the whale’s tail is? I’m sure we’ll be getting more insight into these regions and what shapes them as more high-resolution images come streaming in. Luckily, we aren’t going to have to wait very long!

The View’s Improving as New Horizons Gets Closer

A New Horizons LORRI imager vew of Pluto from a distance of 8 million kilometers (about 5 million miles) from Pluto. Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI
A New Horizons LORRI imager vew of Pluto from a distance of 8 million kilometers (about 5 million miles) from Pluto. Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI

The views will get better as the days go by and higher-resolution images keep truckin’ in from deep space. What amazed me (and maybe it shouldn’t, given how responsive the team is to media and public interest) is that New Horizons sent an image taken yesterday after it went back into normal mode and commenced the flyby mission plan. And, the team turned it right around and got it out to us today. Again, you can make out the whale lower left along the equator, plus the heart-shaped region to its right.

This is also the view that New Horizons will mainly see as it sweeps past next Tuesday, July 14th. However, as it gets closer, we’ll be seeing better and better images.  As Alan Stern has pointed out more than a few times, it’ll be as sharp as being in orbit around Earth and using a high-powered camera to pick out details in Central Park in New York City.

Want to follow along as the mission progresses? NASA just released a timeline for media coverage of the flyby events. If you have access to NASA TV (and maybe, just MAYBE there will be some live coverage by some of the mainstream media), check out the timeline here and get more information about the  mission here and here.

astronomy, New Horizons mission, Pluto

New Horizons Returns to Science Ops at Pluto July 7

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A “Hard to Detect Timing Flaw” Found as the Cause of Safe Mode

New Horizons, Pluto, and Charon (artist's concept). Courtesy NASA.
New Horizons, Pluto, and Charon (artist’s concept). Courtesy NASA.

Good news, folks!  New Horizons will be back in normal science ops mode starting Tuesday, July 7th!  They found the problem!

This just in (from NASA.gov):

“NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.

The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter “safe mode” on July 4 has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft. The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.

“I’m pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. “Now – with Pluto in our sights – we’re on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold.”

Preparations are ongoing to resume the originally planned science operations on July 7 and to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned. The mission science team and principal investigator have concluded that the science observations lost during the anomaly recovery do not affect any primary objectives of the mission, with a minimal effect on lesser objectives. “In terms of science, it won’t change an A-plus even into an A,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.

Adding to the challenge of recovery is the spacecraft’s extreme distance from Earth. New Horizons is almost 3 billion miles away, where radio signals, even traveling at light speed, need 4.5 hours to reach home. Two-way communication between the spacecraft and its operators requires a nine-hour round trip.

Status updates will be issued as new information is available.”

My friend Tim just found this quote from the Apollo 11 landing that seems QUITE appropriate here:
“Roger New Horizons Science Team, you got a bunch of people about to turn blue here,we’re breathing again. Thanks a lot!”