This image shows our previous best view of Pluto, provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, as it morphs into an image from New Horizons. The Hubble image was released in 2010, and the New Horizons image of the same region was taken on July 13, 2015, as the spacecraft successfully captured the first detailed images of the dwarf planet. Credits: NASA/ESA/M. Buie (SwRI)/STScI/JHU-APL/SwRI
For my money, the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond is one of the most audacious and exciting missions sent out through the solar system. I say that as someone who cut her teeth doing science reporting on the Voyager missions! This time last year, we all waited for the spacecraft to arrive at the planet. When it did, on July 14, 2016, it whizzed past at a speed of 49,600 kilometers per hour, and then continued on its way. Hundreds of us — team members, friends, family, and the press were absolutely exhilarated at the dazzling visions of the distant world we were seeing. The data have been streaming back ever since then and each download provides an amazing look at a world that nobody expected. Here’s a “highlights” tour of what we know about Pluto so far.
Revealing Pluto
When the Pluto research papers came out in late 2015 and spring 2016, they revealed a curious and interesting place. Pluto is a real world, with diverse surface features and active geology. It has really fascinating surface chemistry. There’s a complex layered atmosphere, a somewhat puzzling interaction with the Sun, and a collection of small moons that are fascinating places in their own right.
Mind you, those facts (and the science behind them) are what the Pluto science team know after only a few months of data returned by the spacecraft. The full data load won’t finish relaying back to Earth until late 2016. So, there’s still lots to see — and learn. In the meantime, the mission team racks up awards and recognition by the scientific community for their contributions to planetary science. All of it is well-deserved.
Where’s New Horizons Now?
Right now, New Horizons is outbound from Pluto. It already has another target in sight — a Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69. NASA gave the official go-ahead for the extended mission to the next world “out there”. That flyby happens on January 1, 2019. I hope that we’ll all gather again to cheer the spacecraft on as it makes the first-ever close encounter with a KBO beyond Pluto. It’s been an amazing ride, and it’s all thanks to the amazing spacecraft and its Earthbound support team.
I gotta say: we live in a time of fascinating scientific discoveries in our solar system. We’ve been in a “golden age” of in situ planetary exploration that began in the 1960s. Now, well into the 21st century, space agencies around the world continue to dish out juicy findings. Every week I see news from the outer solar system in the form of Pluto and Charon system results from the New Horizons mission. We’re also getting frequent updates from the Dawn mission currently circling Ceres, a dwarf planet out beyond the orbit of Mars in the Asteroid Belt. I find it amazing that we can know so much about these distant places, all through the efforts of a two small spacecraft and the science teams that built and continue to manage them.
Visiting Ceres
Ceres’ Haulani Crater, with a diameter of 21 miles (34 kilometers), shows evidence of landslides from its crater rim. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
For example, Dawn has been in “deep orbit” around Ceres. Since 2015, it has been snapping up high-resolution images and data of the surface. The team just released an image of Haulani crater, a 21 mile-wide impact feature that seems to show evidence of landslides from its crater walls. This enhanced-color image shows the younger features in blue and older ones in gray. The rays extending out around the crater (and colored blue) are made of material ejected as something slammed into the Cerean surface. It also looks like whatever smacked Ceres hit this world right in a region that was already stressed and fractured. Hence the odd shape of the crater.
The Dawn mission is continuing to explore Ceres in minute detail, giving us new insight into this frozen, cracked, and cratered world.
Pluto’s Latest and Greatest
This image of Pluto’s spider terrain was obtained by New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). It was obtained at a range of approximately 21,100 miles (33,900 kilometers) from Pluto, about 45 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
While New Horizons is no longer at Pluto, it continues to radio back data across the solar system from its momentous 2015 encounter. Pluto continues to amaze everybody with a wide range of interesting features in its icy crust. The latest up-close image shows a region of cracked terrain nicknamed the “Ice Spider” of Pluto. Nothing quite like it has been seen on other bodies in the outer solar system.
This crack in the crust is a set of fractures. The longest one is about 580 km (360 miles) long and appears to lie roughly north-south. The shorter cracks run east-west. They’re only about 100 km (60 miles) long. There’s also a hint of some kind of reddish material in some of the spider’s legs.
The fractures that make up the spider are probablye due to a global extension and shrinking of Pluto’s water-ice crust. However, they could also be telling us there’s some local activity occurring, too.
Award-Winning Science
Both the New Horizons and Dawn Mission teams have been winning prestigious awards for their work exploring these distant worlds. On March 8, the Dawn project team was chosen for the prestigious National Aeronautic Association Robert J. Collier Trophy “for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.” Established in 1911, the 8-foot tall trophy resides at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington and is engraved with the names of recipients. Dawn competed with a field of nine finalists to win this year’s award. The award will be presented on June 9.
On March 11, the team was also honored with the National Space Club and Foundation’s Nelson P. Jackson Award, presented annually for “a significant contribution to the missile, aircraft or space field.” The Dawn team accepted the award at the organization’s 59th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner in Washington.
New Horizons team members are also basking in the glory of their achievements. PI Alan Stern, who was just named one of Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world, accepted the Carl Sagan award earlier this year, and gave a Kavli Prize Lecture at the American Astronomical Society meeting about his team’s exploration of the outer solar system. The team itself has earned the John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the Space Foundation, the National Space Society Space Pioneer Award, and many others. The Smithsonian Institution also gave the New Horizons team a Current Achievement award.
As these two missions continue on their voyages of discovery, I’m sure we’ll ALL be awarded with more great views and data of distant worlds.
