Ever since it was discovered, Pluto was just a blur, but now we're finally going to get a proper image!
I think I will die before it happens.
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We all remember that Elon Musk is not the Savior...
New Horizons 2
Details:
I processed the latest available New Horizons image of Pluto taken with the space probes monochrome LORRI camera on 2015-07-03 04-39-15 UTC. Further details in the image.
however, even if it all went to hell today we'd still have this:
which is already many times better resolution than what we had just a few months ago.
Ugh. So they are still milking that single MVIC pixel taken in late May for all these colour photos?
New Horizons lost very little science data when it went into "safe mode" at the weekend, the mission team says.
Nasa's Pluto probe experienced a fault on Saturday that put it temporarily out of contact with the Earth, as it speeds towards a flyby next week.
Principal investigator Alan Stern said that about 30 observations of the dwarf planet were missed as a consequence of the hiccup.
This represents "far less than 1%" of the top science about to come back.
July 7, 2015
New Horizons Map of Pluto: The Whale and the Donut
This is the latest map of Pluto created from images taken from June 27 to July 3 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons, combined with lower-resolution color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph instrument. The center of the map corresponds to the side of Pluto that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 flyby.
July 8, 2015
A ‘Heart’ from Pluto as Flyby Begins
This image of Pluto from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was received on July 8, and has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument.
After a more than nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto, it’s showtime for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, as the flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.
In the early morning hours of July 8, mission scientists received this new view of Pluto—the most detailed yet returned by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. The image was taken on July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode
[/COLOR]Also, teeth... Pluto teeth...
Reminds me of this:
(I wonder if anyone outside of ex-USSR can guess what cartoon is this from?)
It's a shame that the probe cannot be slowed at least a bit, allowing slightly more time for the observations...
Wouldn't an ion engine do the job? At least the adjustments might be done over longer periods of time
New Horizons would require several more RTGs to power a thruster similar to the one on Dawn. If that amount of plutonium was available, the spacecraft would be much heavier. The mission's scientists and engineers obviously thought that a fast transit had more benefits than downsides.
For that, not only you need a very powerful launcher / injection stage, but you also need an engine that can fire to the second at the expected thrust level after nearly 10 years of idling. Pluto/Charon gravity well is tiny, it would require extreme reliability and precision.