New Horizons (2006- ) is an unmanned American spacecraft (pictured above) that is now 500,000 kilometres from Pluto. Tomorrow, on July 14th 2015, it will be the first man-made object ever to visit Pluto.
On January 19th 2006, New Horizons lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It has been going about ten miles a second (16 km/s) ever since – for nine and a half years. And now it is almost there, beyond Neptune, 3 billion miles from Earth (5 billion kilometers).
Because it is going so fast, it will not be able to stop or land or circle Pluto. It will blow right past Pluto and its five moons, taking as many pictures and measurements as it can. If anything screws up, there will be no second chance.
Tonight at 11.17pm EDT (03.17 GMT) it will send its last message before the fly-by. Then it will go silent for 21 hours as it faces away from the Earth to take pictures and measurements during the fly-by. If all goes well, it will face back towards Earth and send a message that should reach us tomorrow night at 8.53pm EDT (00.53 GMT). If that does not work, it will try again eight hours later.
When it passed Jupiter in 2007 it went through a dry run. All seemed well. But then two weeks ago, on July 4th, its main computer suddenly went offline and the spacecraft went into a controlled spin. The ground crew at Johns Hopkins’s APL (not Caltech’s JPL) was able to talk to the backup computer and set it right. Not an easy task: New Horizons is so far away it takes radio signals 4.5 hours to get there.
It will not just take pictures of Pluto and its moons, but it will find out what Pluto’s thin air is made of and see what the solar wind is like out there. From the pictures we should be able to tell quite a bit about Pluto’s history.
The more we can learn about Pluto, the more we can understand the Earth, because Pluto is probably what the Earth was like billions of years ago before it reached its present size. It is like an Earth in the making.
Pluto has at least five moons: Charon, Hydra, Nix, Styx and Kerberos. When New Horizons left, we only knew about the first three. Charon is the largest. It has what looks like two mountains, which have been nicknamed Spock and Mordor.
When New Horizons left Earth, Pluto was still considered to be a planet. But since we now know there is other stuff in its region of space – maybe a trillion sleeping comets, hundreds of thousands of asteroids that are 100km across or larger and at least one other Pluto-sized object, Eris – Pluto is now considered to be a dwarf planet of what is called the Kuiper Belt.
If the Pluto fly-by is a success and if the project gets more money, then New Horizons will check out other things in the Kuiper Belt.
– Abagond, 2015.
Check back for updates. Here is a picture it took of Pluto yesterday:
Update (July 14th): Here is the picture of Pluto it sent last night right before its fly-by:
The lighter region at the bottom is shaped like the Disney character Pluto!
Update (July 15th 01.15 GMT): New Horizons just reported back. The fly-by was a success!
Update (21.17 GMT): Here is a picture of Pluto from the fly-by. It has some surprisingly young mountains:
Here is a picture of the moon Charon:
Update (July 18th): Some more pictures:
The best pictures of Pluto from 1930 to 2015.
The ice plains of Pluto from its “heart” region.
A close-up of Charon. Notice the sunken mountain at top.
See also:
- On Twitter: @NASANewHorizons (NASA), @NewHorizons2015 (Alan Stern, the top scientist)
- Pluto
- Eris
- Annie Easley – a Black woman who worked on the Centaur rocket that sent New Horizon into space
Abagond 
Really puts things in perspective that we can do stuff like this, really inspiring. Makes me take a step back realizing how insignificant I am and how ridiculous all my problems are in the grand scheme of things. Something above and beyond our immediate needs and problems, something for humanity, inspiring stuff. The thing I want to see most before I die is a manned mission to Mars. I’m over 40 so they better get to it!
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..Looking forward to seeing the results that may come from this-just imagine if all the time, effort and $ that is put into projects like was to be invested in this same way for bettering (ALL) humankind, what an improved place Earth could be right for us!!
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..could be right now for us, typo
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The dwarf planet
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I really have laugh these days when the NASA media releases stories and images about supposedly new discoveries in our solar system, like this, about Pluto.
The truth is we are being lied to and have been for at least the last 70 years…!
“…The world we live in is far more remarkable than most people could ever have imagined. Our military-industrial complex has secretly colonized our solar system – and beyond.
The technology that already exists, today, built by defense contractors who hold corporate facilities here on earth, satisfies every wish you’ve ever had for a high-tech future – from any sci-fi movie you could possibly think of… ”
http://exopolitics.org/second-eyewitness-report-of-secret-space-meetings-discussing-alien-disclosure/
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nice to see abagond branch out to non social conflict topics – cheers to that!
@Kwamla
long time no see ,hi ya doing brother!
in regards to this topic
while I’m interested in science and science fiction ,this aspect does not hold as much interest as other aspects of science and even astronomy.
The lighter region at the bottom is shaped like the Disney character Pluto!
Now that’s just silly reaching!
“Mz.Nikita
-just imagine if all the time, effort and $ that is put into projects like was to be invested in this same way for bettering (ALL) humankind, what an improved place Earth could be right for us!!”
this kinda sums up my perspective on these external scientific endeavors esp those massive particle collider projects to find yet another obscure subatomic particle.
It seems to me that eliminating poverty ,illness and crime are far more important scientific endeavors than whats way out there or way way small.
And then there is our minds and our bodies – do you know what your heart ,kidney or liver is doing right now?
why can’t we regrow limbs and other body parts?
wouldn’t you like to live at least 500 years more than our average 80 to 100 if your lucky.
discoveries in these areas would benefit all of humanity as opposed to a fraction of the current dominant group and the benefits would allow those so inclined to explore the very far away and the very small to their full content with dignity and honor – but we not that evolved yet – if we ever will be.
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@Mbeti
Just a couple of points. 1) It would be nice to see pictures and short bios of all the African Americans who worked on the many, many component projects that, when assembled, became New Horizons Project.
I watched a documentary recently on New Horizons that aired on the NASA channel. While the director rightfully concentrated on the principal scientists and engineers, the film had a segment that showed an auditorium full of the current New Horizons team members (~100 people) and contrasted it with another picture of the team from (~10-15) years ago. I found it odd that there were no A/A’s in the current group picture and at least 5-6 A/A men and women in the picture from (pre Obama / Bolden)10 years ago.
WTF..??
2) While I marvel at the genius’ behind space exploration, I often contemplate the fate of any ET’s we might encounter that don’t have a fully stocked arsenal of highly advanced weapons and are unfortunate enough to have any resources we might crave.
Same story, different day
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Greetings Mbeti,
Yes Brother it has been a a while since I felt able to comment here. As a longstanding commentator for at least 6 years I’ve noticed the regularity of how the same topics from slightly differing perspective seem to be debated endlessly with no actually progress or development in the shared knowledge of information.
There are many areas of untruth, intentionally concealed and undisclosed information. Space exploration and Technologies are just two of those. If you have been to my Blog (http://wordpress.kwamla.com/) which I know you have will understand what I am talking about here.
Your comments here cover essentially what I talking about. All of these wishes, desires and technologies already presently exist! But their knowledge and information are being deliberately and deceptively withheld from the general populations.
The desire and automatic programmed response to write off what I am saying here as just “Conspiracy theories” has so ingrained and indoctrinated into most people that they will not even see the evidence for this when it is presented in front of their own eyes!
Nevertheless, the situation is rapidly changing in our societies where we will be unavoidably made aware of these deceptions and forced to accept this as FACT or not. The information is there and anyone who seriously wants to research this stuff can find it as I have discovered and shared in my own news compilations:.https://www.rebelmouse.com/KNews/
This is why posts like this based on information we are given by bodies like NASA are equivalent to being told stories via nursey rhymes when we were at kindergarten school. Some of it is partially true but the rest is really just made up!
Once we start going to University school much of what what we thought we knew and learned earlier will have to be rapidly abandoned and discarded. This will be particularly true if we expect to engage or negotiate with ETs.
But then our Governments are already doing this!
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http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/feature-astronomers-say-neptune-sized-planet-lurks-unseen-solar-system?utm_source=general_public&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=planetx_vid-1990
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