I have a feeling that this little plantet and its moon will be far more amazing than we ever imagined. I'm really happy that we are finally committing a mission to the last planet. Seeing Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt is a nice bonus as well. Pluto Visit in NASA Plans By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News Drawing of New Horizons April 11, 2003 — It was the last planet discovered, the farthest from Earth, and now Pluto is finally going to get a visit from a spacecraft. The New Horizons spacecraft and its mission to the last stop in the solar system has been in the planning stages for about a decade, and has more than once been shoved onto NASA's back burner. But this week NASA gave the go-ahead for engineers and scientists to build the spacecraft that will hopefully launch in January 2006 and reach the chilliest, most distant world by 2015. "It's risen from the ashes a few times," said New Horizons project scientist and Johns Hopkins University physicist Hal Weaver. This time, however, the go-ahead means engineers and scientists can start "cutting metal" and constructing the spacecraft and science instruments that will scrutinize Pluto, its moon Charon and hopefully one or two of the mysterious Kuiper Belt objects in the vast space beyond Pluto. On its way to Pluto, New Horizons will visit Jupiter, where it will collect data and receive a gravity-assisted sling-shot-like boost to speed it up for the very long haul to the edges of the solar system. That's a bonus for Jupiter scientists who were about to face a long period without any close-up data on the largest planet, due to coming end of the Galileo mission, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist Richard Binzel. If all goes according to plan, New Horizons will start taking detailed pictures of Pluto and Charon about three months before it flies by the planet. That way it can catch every side of the planet as it turns through its 154-hour long days. The spacecraft will also analyze the spectrums of infrared and ultraviolet light reflected from the surface to learn about the make-up of the planet's frozen surface. Pluto is believed to have an atmosphere during at least the part of its 248-year orbit that brings it closer to the sun. Right now, Pluto is receding from the sun and scientists hope to get to it before all of its atmosphere freezes out as bright frost on the surface, as it's presumed to do, said Binzel. Named for the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto is about 1,470 miles in diameter: just two-thirds as large as moon. Charon is named for the mythical ferryman who carried people to the Pluto's realm across the river Styx. Charon is about half the size of Pluto, at 774 miles around.
sweet. astronomy is cool. however, 2015 is one hell of a long way off. hopefully we'll be celebrating our 2nd 4-peat around then.
I have one question: Why? I understand that space flight has led to a lot of scienctific breakthroughs that have changed our lives for the better, (read VELCRO) but why do we need to spend billions to got to Pluto?
Hopefully NASA will have a better response for Congress than that. BTW, Skinner never bought that reasoning from me...
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to ours minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. -Wells Now we only have to wait 12 years until the probe gets there. If we are lucky George will still be Prez and will handle said "aliens" with swift US style justice.
NOTE: This thread was started over a decade ago. Saw a slashdot article today about Pluto and decided to check out the New Horizons mission status...and it couldn't have been better timing. Looks like the craft is going to wake up this weekend and start active communications with Earth again. I know it's still seven months away...but this is cool as @#$&!!! I hope we can update this thread with some really cool pics/info starting next July and moving forward. Here are a few links with updated info... http://phys.org/news/2014-12-horizons-mission-nearing-pluto-years.html http://www.universetoday.com/116855...on-jupiter-pics-from-new-horizons-spacecraft/ http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/12031700-the-new-horizons-science.html Mission page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/#.VIB-GTHF9RU
Wow, this is a quite a bump -- just like the Voyager thread on it leaving the solar system it's really hard to believe I started this a over a decade ago. I've been following this fairly closely and everything is looking good -- I think that Pluto and it's (now) 5 moons are going to be very interesting.