Pluto Encounter:

http://www.seeplutonow.com/

 

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Two new pictures from New Horizons mission.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33369045

 

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At that distance from the sun I was thinking Pluto to be more like an ice world and covered with ice and so appearing white.
So I'm wondering why Pluto in the above two images has a fawn colour? or is this a contrast thingy?

 

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New Horizons spacecraft experiences anomaly:

The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of July 4 that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-horizons-spacecraft-anomaly.html#jCp

 

Pluto is a terrestrial planet, but I'm pretty sure it does have plenty of ice coverage also.
Maybe Pluto's highly elliptical orbit plays a part in part melting?

 

This may help sweetpea....A very informative little video

• by NASA.gov Video
  
• 15 videos

1. ▶

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   Pluto in a Minute: July 4, 2015
   NASA New Horizons
2. 2

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   Pluto in a Minute: July 3, 2015
   NASA New Horizons
3. 3

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   Pluto in a Minute: July 2, 2015
   NASA New Horizons
4. 4

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   Pluto in a Minute: July 1, 2015
   NASA New Horizons
5. 5

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   Pluto in a Minute: June 30, 2015
   NASA New Horizons

 

Spacecraft closing in on Pluto hits speed bump, but recovers
21 hours ago by By Marcia Dunn

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is on track to sweep past Pluto next week despite hitting a "speed bump" that temporarily halted science collection.

A computer overload prompted the spacecraft to partially shut down on July 4th—just days before the first-ever close flyby of Pluto. Flight controllers managed to regain contact with the spacecraft in just over an hour and correct the tense situation, occurring after a relatively quiet journey of 3 billion miles (4.83 billion kilometers) and 9½ years.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-spacecraft-pluto-recovers.html#jCp

 

I wonder new horizon will make it's closest aproach in 3 days and 1 day on pluto takes 6days and 9 hours by that logic do we already posses the best images from the far side of pluto? (New horizon will only be able to take high resolation fotos of the sunlid side of pluto they will also take picturs of a moon [charon] lid night side but the quality will most definitly be less).
This is a picture taken on Juli 8 (note we actually got better foto's from parts of the backside as it rotates slowly and parts will still be visible until right before the flyby).

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There it is. Spectacular.

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closest approach this could possible be the textbook picture of pluto for the next 50 or so years.
It's gorgeous. Can't wait for the incoming pictures hope that all goes well.

 

APL/ JHU, where I worked for 30 years, has now via "MESSENGER" & "NEW HORIZONS" space craft, designed and built by APL, told the world most of what it knows about Mercury and Pluto. Only recently did MESSENGER finally almost run out of the fuel needed to keep it low Mercury* orbit (for years) so with its last maneuver fuel was intentionally crashed into the surface taking its closest ever pictures (by radar, as I recall, due to thick opaque atmosphere), seconds before impact.

APL has designed and built about 200 space craft but few know of its dominate role in near earth orbiting satellites and deep space probes. In one case, JPL was so far behind schedule and over budget, that NASA cancelled their contract and gave it to APL. Despite the hole (financial and time) the project was in, APL delivered on time and under budget! APL invented "gravity gradient attitude stabilization" (zero energy required to keep high gain communication antennae point towards center of earth) and "momentum wheels" (or at least was first to use them) for orientation control / changes.

* BTW, New Horizon, with relative low weight for what all it can do, is the fastest space craft ever launched yet that was 9.6 years before today's closest approach to Pluto. Orbitng Mercury as Messenger did, requires more energy than the fastest ever trip to Pluto did. Neither was easy, but APL did both with great success.

APL saved the Pacific Fleet in WWII by inventing the proximity fuse, that could fired with great acceleration stresses and shoot down the Kama Kazi planes and the Navy has be the generous supporter of APL ever since. More on APL here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_Physics_Laboratory
More on messenger here: http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2014/141224.asp

See photo at above link and note long gravity gradient boom pointed at the surface (which keeps the satellite in the shadow from the intense sunlight too).

APL's controls the satellites it designs and builds from the room shown in photo here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...361248-25ad-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html

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APL complex in Howard County MD. The large disk of the photo may be pointing to Pluto, as the signals that control New Horizon leave from it.
(My guess, but shadow shows it is pointing away from sun.)

 

well thanks for all the people who were involved.
Let's hope the mission get's extended and we will get to see a other encounter somewhere in 2019

 

Great little video cast at the following link, and plenty of detailing on findings and data so far........
http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html

So far data and photos received have evidenced huge "water ice" Mountains, Icy mountain ranges, 3500 metres high and signs of an active world.
Charon also seems to have recently active regions, with an apparent canyon 10 kms deep.
The moon Hydra is composed of water ice.
And more data and info to come over the next few years from the KBO region and beyond.
Great, amazing stuff!!!

 

danshawen : "as well as the best overall case study in celestial mechanics""--as well as the best overall case study in celestial mechanics."
Pluto's orbit falls 38.8/39.5 within 1.2% % of it's predicted "Bode-law" position, it's perihelion, overlapping with Neptune's orbit, shares the outer max orbit spacing of 9.6 AU.
Pluto is a planet, dwarfie as it might be, by virtue of it's secure position, field of movement in space.

 

Bodes law is probably not really telling us anything. Pluto is just one of many dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt which pretty much blows up Bodes law anyway

 

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High resolution camera

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Full view at about closest approach

 

There are too few impact craters for Pluto to be as old as the other planets are* and at times Neptune is more distant from the sun than Pluto is. (True only a few decades ago.) Pluto's orbit is 17.1 degrees inclined to the ecliptic. All this can be explained, if Pluto was once in relatively close orbit about Neptune - one of Neptune's moons. I. e. just as the earth's moon is partially shielded from asteroid collisons by the earth, Neptune could have done the same fore Pluto until some "third body" freed Pluto from Neptune's gravitational grip. - Just my idea for someone to shoot down.
* See essentially "crater free" sea in first photo of post 36. Hard to believe it was recently moltant.

 

perhaps not much, but when David Gregory ~300 years ago showed that planets appear to be spaced at always doubling distances, he was onto something.
In that theoretical grid, Pluto' mean was predictable, and with it that it's velocity, displacement on those plates. For the Gregory/ Bode doubling, the blow is not Pluto which confirms the sequence, but Neptune, which is makes spacing even.
So: knowing Kepler, Tombaugh, using "Bode", could have known the average velocity, the distance travelled between "takes" by his prey.

 

question: would not such a "shield" also bring in, focising by it's gravity near missed to become bull-eyes? Moons more heavily cratered than their parent bodies?

 

Then there are the 5 moons that surround Pluto, they would have done a much better job at collecting the asteroids headed towards Pluto and if they are well cratered that would present the fact that they did just that.