New Horizons Reaches Pluto

[Emma]

The New Horizon's Probe has made its historic flyby of Pluto earlier this morning and its data is still coming in. We finally have a decent picture of what Pluto looks like, shown above, and the probe should have some more information too.

So what do you think so far? Was it what you expected? How excited are you? I've been waiting for this day for a long time. Pluto is a long way away and it took a long time for this probe to reach it. Pluto was still a planet when the probe launched.

 

[Kyru]

I haven't/didn't hear anything about this until now! I'm very surprised and quite shocked it wasn't more announced. Keep the updates/details flowing!

 

[Emma]

I haven't/didn't hear anything about this until now! I'm very surprised and quite shocked it wasn't more announced. Keep the updates/details flowing!

It was announced. getting a flyby of a small body so far away requires incredibly precise calculations. They knew exactly when it'd reach Pluto from the day they launched it and it's always been listed and several space sites, including NASAs, have been talking about it for the last few months.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Looks different than how my science textbooks back in school depicted it, lol. I'm totally excited we are finally getting decent pictures of it, there has been so many chages on Pluto's status over the decades.

 

[Curmudgeon]

objects 4.67 billion miles away may appear differently when approached

 

[Emma]

This is the New Horizons image of Pluto's moon Charon:

There's a lot of data and the probe has limited bandwidth and it takes four and a half hours for it to reach us so it's going to take a while for everything to come in. And it's estimated it's going to take at least three years to fully analyze all the data.
More pictures and information should be posted regularly here:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/

 

[Batman]

XKCD ^

 

[Jamie]

So did they find Prothean technology on the moon?

 

[Djinn]

What I think is more amazing is how this is actually invigorating interest in the space program again. After a few years of incredibly shaky interest and future for almost anything space related whatsoever I think this will go a long way in bringing it back.

 

[Emma]

New Horizons sent its mission complete phone home signal after its preplanned blackout. But don't worry. We're still going to get more data from it. Remember the limited bandwitdh thing? It's going to take sixteen months for all of it to come through back to Earth. There should be some more images released later today and we'll get more information as time goes on.

One of the really interesting things we've already found out is that Pluto does have an active atmosphere and it actually snows on the surface. I assume we're going to hear more about that soon. It sounds amazing and I want to know more about that.

 

[Mr. Ister]

This is pretty awesome, I've been following it closely. Converges nicely with me reading my first Carl Sagan book (Pale Blue Dot) at the moment.

 

[Djinn]

Charon

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/charon-s-surprising-youthful-and-varied-terrain

Icy mountains found on Pluto

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-icy-mountains-of-pluto

 

[Emma]

In case anyone is curious, I found this article that has a pretty in-depth explanation as to how the data from New Horizons is being received. I thought this was incredibly cool though I may be a bit too much of a geek.

How NASA beams Pluto images 3 billion miles to Earth

There's also the NASA site for their real time communications network, which that article describes, with all their active probes:


This was so cool, I wish I knew about it sooner.

Deep Space Network Now

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

I'm interested to find that it isn't just a uniform ball of ice, it seems to have some geographical locations. I also think it's interesting that is has snow made of nitrogen, and they've seen a tar substance made of nitrogen also.

 

[Emma]

I'm interestefld to find that it isn't just a uniform ball of ice, it seems to have some geographical locations. I also think it's interesting that is has snow made of nitrogen, and they've seen a tar substance made of nitrogen also.

That heart shaped feature that has caught the internet's attention has been named already. It's now officially called the Tombaugh Regio, named after the discoverer of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh.