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New Horizons mission poster....
New Horizons is now closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft has been.
As great as this achievement is, there is now a possible danger to New Horizons - the possibility of a debris cloud, rings or undiscovered moons around Pluto that may impact and destroy the probe.
This risk was highlighted by the discovery of Pluto's fourth moon, P4, which increased the risk of at least a ring system made of debris knocked off the multiple moons. There is also a new theory that this debris could be a 3 dimensional structure - a cloud around Pluto and its moons.
Last November a meeting of planetary scientists with expertise in ring systems was held in Boulder, Colorado and a strategy developed in the form of an alternate paths, one being 180° away from Pluto's largest moon Charon, the theory being that area would be freshly swept clear.
In the mean time Hubble, ground based telescopes, and large radio telescopes are trained on the Pluto system looking for signs of danger to New Horizons because course corrections will have to happen up to a year before it arrives.
Discovery News....
New Horizons is now closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft has been.
As great as this achievement is, there is now a possible danger to New Horizons - the possibility of a debris cloud, rings or undiscovered moons around Pluto that may impact and destroy the probe.
This risk was highlighted by the discovery of Pluto's fourth moon, P4, which increased the risk of at least a ring system made of debris knocked off the multiple moons. There is also a new theory that this debris could be a 3 dimensional structure - a cloud around Pluto and its moons.
Last November a meeting of planetary scientists with expertise in ring systems was held in Boulder, Colorado and a strategy developed in the form of an alternate paths, one being 180° away from Pluto's largest moon Charon, the theory being that area would be freshly swept clear.
In the mean time Hubble, ground based telescopes, and large radio telescopes are trained on the Pluto system looking for signs of danger to New Horizons because course corrections will have to happen up to a year before it arrives.
Discovery News....
PLUTO-BOUND SPACECRAFT BREAKS NEW RECORD
NASA's New Horizons probe has achieved another milestone on its already historic mission to our solar system's erstwhile ninth planet: it is now officially the closest any human-made spacecraft has ever come to Pluto! And it will be only getting closer each day (by about a million kilometers!) until it finally makes its closest pass by the dwarf planet and its family of frozen moons on July 14, 2015.
The previous distance record was held by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which came within 983 million miles (1.58 billion km) of Pluto on Jan. 29, 1986. New Horizons surpassed that distance on Friday, Dec. 2., after 2,143 days of cruising interplanetary space.
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New Horizons will not orbit or land on Pluto but will pass by closely enough to allow its high-definition camera (LORRI) to image the dwarf planet's surface in unprecedented detail, resolving features as small as 200 feet across.
After the close encounter New Horizons will venture out into the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy bodies and other Pluto-like worlds. Plans to visit another Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) are still being developed. But first things first: Pluto awaits!
"What a cool milestone!" said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute. "Although we’re still a long way -- 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto -- we're now in new territory as the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to Pluto, and getting closer every day by over a million kilometers."
NASA's New Horizons probe has achieved another milestone on its already historic mission to our solar system's erstwhile ninth planet: it is now officially the closest any human-made spacecraft has ever come to Pluto! And it will be only getting closer each day (by about a million kilometers!) until it finally makes its closest pass by the dwarf planet and its family of frozen moons on July 14, 2015.
The previous distance record was held by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which came within 983 million miles (1.58 billion km) of Pluto on Jan. 29, 1986. New Horizons surpassed that distance on Friday, Dec. 2., after 2,143 days of cruising interplanetary space.
>
New Horizons will not orbit or land on Pluto but will pass by closely enough to allow its high-definition camera (LORRI) to image the dwarf planet's surface in unprecedented detail, resolving features as small as 200 feet across.
After the close encounter New Horizons will venture out into the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy bodies and other Pluto-like worlds. Plans to visit another Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) are still being developed. But first things first: Pluto awaits!
"What a cool milestone!" said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute. "Although we’re still a long way -- 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto -- we're now in new territory as the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to Pluto, and getting closer every day by over a million kilometers."