Mission to Pluto - latest achievement in space
a couple of stories on the mission
New Horizons: Release of Pluto images next step after probe's historic flyby
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/us/nasa-new-horizons-pluto-flyby/
Laurel, Maryland (CNN)The first human footprint on the moon. The landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA scientists put the significance of the New Horizons spacecraft flyby of Pluto on Tuesday right up there with those milestones.
The most beautiful part may come Wednesday, when the images that the craft took and transmitted back to Earth are released.
They will be from the closest point the probe came to the dwarf planet as it made its milestone in space exploration history.
The Pluto mission completes the reconnaissance of the classical solar system, and it makes the United States the first nation to send a space probe to every planet from Mercury to Pluto.
NASA’s New Horizons probe reaches Pluto after 9 years
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nasas-new-horizons-probe-reaches-pluto-after-9-years-2015-07-14
NASA scientists juggled jubilation and anxiety Tuesday as a U.S. spacecraft reached the climax of its epic encounter with Pluto, culminating a nine-year voyage across 3 billion miles to reach the unexplored dwarf planet.
Traveling at about 30,000 miles an hour, the New Horizons spacecraft was scheduled to fly within 7,800 miles of Pluto at 7:49 a.m. ET Tuesday.
During the 22 hours of its closest approach, however, mission managers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which designed, built, and operates the $720 million mission, didn’t know if their spacecraft and its irreplaceable trove of data was intact or had been destroyed by orbital debris.
Since late Monday, the probe has been incommunicado and flying on autopilot because it can’t make its preprogrammed observations and transmit to Earth at the same time. NASA and its mission managers won’t know if all went as planned until a brief spacecraft signal reaches them at 9 p.m. EDT or so Tuesday. As a fail-safe measure, they retrieved all the information gathered by the probe’s instruments in recent days before the radio blackout began, including a detailed color image of Pluto taken about 16 hours before the probe’s closest approach.
“We will breathe the final sigh of relief at 9 p.m. and that is when we can call it a successful flyby,” said mission principle investigator Alan Stern at the Southwest Research Institute office in Boulder, Colo.
this is all just so very cool ... the latest images show an array of ice mountains, and hey, where there is ice, there should be water yes? and with water, life?
this may be a very interesting story to follow
and on one of the first images, we see a heart shaped area of the planet (yes dammit, Pluto is still a planet!) :
well we heart you too Pluto
New Horizons: Release of Pluto images next step after probe's historic flyby
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/us/nasa-new-horizons-pluto-flyby/
Laurel, Maryland (CNN)The first human footprint on the moon. The landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA scientists put the significance of the New Horizons spacecraft flyby of Pluto on Tuesday right up there with those milestones.
The most beautiful part may come Wednesday, when the images that the craft took and transmitted back to Earth are released.
They will be from the closest point the probe came to the dwarf planet as it made its milestone in space exploration history.
The Pluto mission completes the reconnaissance of the classical solar system, and it makes the United States the first nation to send a space probe to every planet from Mercury to Pluto.
NASA’s New Horizons probe reaches Pluto after 9 years
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nasas-new-horizons-probe-reaches-pluto-after-9-years-2015-07-14
NASA scientists juggled jubilation and anxiety Tuesday as a U.S. spacecraft reached the climax of its epic encounter with Pluto, culminating a nine-year voyage across 3 billion miles to reach the unexplored dwarf planet.
Traveling at about 30,000 miles an hour, the New Horizons spacecraft was scheduled to fly within 7,800 miles of Pluto at 7:49 a.m. ET Tuesday.
During the 22 hours of its closest approach, however, mission managers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which designed, built, and operates the $720 million mission, didn’t know if their spacecraft and its irreplaceable trove of data was intact or had been destroyed by orbital debris.
Since late Monday, the probe has been incommunicado and flying on autopilot because it can’t make its preprogrammed observations and transmit to Earth at the same time. NASA and its mission managers won’t know if all went as planned until a brief spacecraft signal reaches them at 9 p.m. EDT or so Tuesday. As a fail-safe measure, they retrieved all the information gathered by the probe’s instruments in recent days before the radio blackout began, including a detailed color image of Pluto taken about 16 hours before the probe’s closest approach.
“We will breathe the final sigh of relief at 9 p.m. and that is when we can call it a successful flyby,” said mission principle investigator Alan Stern at the Southwest Research Institute office in Boulder, Colo.
this is all just so very cool ... the latest images show an array of ice mountains, and hey, where there is ice, there should be water yes? and with water, life?
this may be a very interesting story to follow
and on one of the first images, we see a heart shaped area of the planet (yes dammit, Pluto is still a planet!) :
well we heart you too Pluto