Updates NASA New Horizons Mission Updates

[MaverickSawyer]

No. There's still a working camera on the Voyagers, that they've used a few times since the end of the Grand Tour, if memory serves.

 

[boogabooga]

Is this the farthest we've sent (and used) a working camera?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

 

[Unstung]

The Voyagers' cameras have been turned off due to power constraints. New Horizon's next target is located further than where the Pale Blue Dot was taken.

 

[RGClark]

Pluto has blue hazes and surface water ice.
Laurel Kornfeld
October 9th, 2015

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/solar-system/pluto-has-blue-hazes-and-surface-water-ice/

The ice on the surface is interesting IF there is internal heat, then possibly you could have subsurface liquid water. The blue haze in the atmosphere is interesting because it suggests complex organics in the atmosphere. The complex organics in the atmosphere quite likely could be communicated to the subsurface. Then you could have subsurface complex organics and lmiquid water, IF Pluto has internal heating.

TECH NOV 9 2015, 7:22 PM ET
'Definitely Weird': Scientists Spot Ice-Spewing Volcanoes on Pluto.
by REUTERS
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...ists-spot-ice-spewing-volcanoes-pluto-n460301


We gotta go!


Bob Clark

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151120

November 20, 2015
A Day on Pluto, a Day on Charon

On approach in July 2015, the cameras on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured Pluto rotating over the course of a full “Pluto day.” The best available images of each side of Pluto taken during approach have been combined to create this view of a full rotation.

 

[Notebook]

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first few of a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby – and this image sequence forms the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.

Every week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft transmits data stored on its digital recorders from its flight through the Pluto system on July 14. These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features less than half the size of a city block on the diverse surface of the distant planet. In these new images, New Horizons captured a wide variety of spectacular, cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151204

EDIT: Just noticed "Every week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft ". Interesting turn of phrase, since most folk I know don't have a piano, but we all know how big they are...Grand, Baby-Grand, Upright, Honky-Tonk, Electric, Player-Piano, Pia-nola. maybe there isn't an SI standard of piano-osity?

N.

 

[Notebook]

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/christmas-pluto/

Pluto gets into the holiday spirit, decked out in red and green. This image was produced by the New Horizons composition team, using a pair of Ralph/LEISA instrument scans obtained at approximately 9:40 AM on July 14, from a mean range of 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers). The resolution is about 7 kilometers per LEISA pixel. Three infrared wavelength ranges (2.28-2.23, 1.25-1.30 and 1.64-1.73 microns) were placed into the three color channels (red, green and blue, respectively) to create this false color Christmas portrait.

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151231

December 31, 2015
Looking Back at the ‘Year of Pluto’

New Horizons Project Manager Glen Fountain gives a Pluto flyby assessment during a press conference on July 14, 2015. (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will mark New Year’s some 125 million miles beyond Pluto, far removed from the excitement and activity that accompanied its historic flight through the Pluto system just five months ago.

The intrepid probe continues to send volumes of pictures and other data from the July 14 encounter – stashed on its digital recorders – over a radio link to Earth stretching billions of miles. And as the pictures reach home, they remind us that 2015 was the year a small world on the planetary frontier captured our hearts, thanks to a determined and inspired team of government, academic and commercial partners determined to expand the frontiers of science and explore an entirely new realm of the solar system.

 

[Artlav]

Meanwhile, the pictures keep trickling down.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/new.sputnik.top_.jpg

And it would seem that we have found where the ancient Space Pirates hid their treasure (the lower end of the mosaic):

 

[Post much?]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151204

EDIT: Just noticed "Every week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft ". Interesting turn of phrase, since most folk I know don't have a piano, but we all know how big they are...Grand, Baby-Grand, Upright, Honky-Tonk, Electric, Player-Piano, Pia-nola. maybe there isn't an SI standard of piano-osity?

N.

One of the dimensions measures 2.7 meters (according to the wiki), the size of a Steinway D, with the others about the size of a Yamaha C7. Though, there are other bigger pianos out there to join the smaller ones, so it'd be helpful to define that metric so people don't get confused .

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=404

Latest news, they seem to have changed their presentation. Maybe a more generic info style?

N.

 

[Notebook]

January 19, 2016The Voyage of a Lifetime: New Horizons Marks 10 Years Since Launch

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160119

The time went by faster than expected.”

The lomg winter nights just fly by....

N.

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160211

February 11, 2016
Putting Pluto’s Geology on the Map
Images from NASA’s New Horizons mission are showing that the surface of Pluto possesses an astonishing and unexpected geological diversity. To help make sense of this complexity and to piece together how Pluto’s surface has formed and evolved over time, mission scientists construct geological maps like the one shown in this image.

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160218

February 18, 2016
Pluto’s ‘Hulk-like’ Moon Charon: A Possible Ancient Ocean?

Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Pluto’s largest moon may have gotten too big for its own skin.

Images from NASA’s New Horizons mission suggest that Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing out on the moon’s surface and causing it to stretch and fracture on a massive scale.

 

[RGClark]

SPACE
Pluto Probably Has an Ocean Under its Surface
MAR 17, 2016 02:00 PM ET // BY IRENE KLOTZ
http://news.discovery.com/space/pluto-probably-has-an-ocean-under-its-surface-160317.htm

Bob Clark

 

[hutchison66]

a lot of the details we're seeing with Pluto don't make sense young surface an atmosphere and now maybe an ocean under the surface when it was expected a cold dead world ancient and dark planetoid there must be heat coming from somewhere maybe its close orbit with Charon heating it up or it has a hell of a lot of radioactive material at its core

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160317

March 17, 2016
Research Papers in Science Reveal New Aspects of Pluto and Its Moons

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160321

The team behind NASA’s New Horizons mission – which last summer delivered the first close-up look at distant Pluto while capping the initial reconnaissance of our planetary system – earned several honors this month for its historic accomplishments.

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160324

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when – thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto's atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface – liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world.

 

[Notebook]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160331

March 31, 2016
Pluto's Bladed Terrain in 3-D

'Blades' Across Pluto: This global view of Pluto combines a Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color scan and an image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), both obtained on July 13, 2015 – the day before New Horizons' closest approach. The MVIC scan was taken from a range of 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers), at a resolution of 20 miles (32 kilometers) per pixel. The corresponding LORRI image was obtained from roughly the same range, but has a higher spatial resolution of 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel. The red outline marks the large area of mysterious, bladed terrain extending from the eastern section of the large feature informally named Tombaugh Regio.

Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

One of the strangest landforms spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft when it flew past Pluto last July was the "bladed" terrain just east of Tombaugh Regio, the informal name given to Pluto's large heart-shaped surface feature