Category Archives: Pluto and beyond

Videos: New Horizons-Pluto and Voyager-Neptune fly-by discussions

The videos have been posted of the panels in Monday’s two-part NASA event (see earlier posting) about the New Horizons Pluto mission and comparing that probe’s passing the orbit of Neptune with the 25th anniversary of the Voyager 2 fly-by of Neptune.

A panel discussion of the New Horizons project:

Caption:

NASA’s Mission to Pluto was a two part televised science event at NASA headquarters on August 25 – the same date that the agency’s New Horizons spacecraft passed the orbit of Neptune on its way to Pluto and exactly 25 years after the Voyager spacecraft’s encounter with Neptune in 1989. During the first event, entitled NASA’s New Horizons Pluto Mission: Continuing Voyager’s Legacy of Exploration, NASA scientists and officials discussed the two missions.

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Five participants in the Voyager 2 fly-by of  Neptune in 1989 reminisce and compare that event with next year’s New Horizon’s fly by of Pluto:

Caption:

NASA’s Mission to Pluto was a two part televised science event at NASA headquarters on August 25 – the same date that the agency’s New Horizons spacecraft passed the orbit of Neptune on its way to Pluto and exactly 25 years after the Voyager spacecraft’s encounter with Neptune in 1989. During the second event, entitled New Horizons-Voyager Connections: Memories from the Team, several New Horizons science team members gave personal accounts of their work during the Voyager Neptune encounter and discussed their new assignments on the Pluto mission.

Alan Stern talks about New Horizons and Uwingu on The Space Show

Alan Stern, principle investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and head of Uwingu, spoke on The Space Show last weekend: Dr. Alan Stern, Sunday, 8-24-14 | Thespaceshow’s Blog.

Listen to the audio:

He discussed the status of the New Horizons spacecraft, which just passed by Neptune, and its fly-by of Pluto next summer. He also talked about Uwingu’s public participation programs including the new Beam Me To Mars activity.

New Horizons Pluto mission panels on NASA TV

There will be two live programs today on NASA TV dealing with the New Horizons  mission to Pluto:

NASA TV to Air Events That Highlight Pluto-Bound Spacecraft 

Media and the public are invited to attend two events Monday, Aug. 25 from 1-3 p.m. EDT to learn more about the agency’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and its historic connection to the Voyager spacecraft’s visit to Neptune in 1989.

The events, which will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website, will take place in the Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW in Washington.

New Horizons will conduct a six -month-long study of Pluto and its five moons, including a close approach in July 2015.

• The 1-2 p.m. event will feature a panel discussion with:
o Jim Green, director, NASA’s Planetary Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
o Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
o Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado

• The 2-3 p.m. event will include several New Horizons science team members giving personal accounts of their work during the Voyager Neptune encounter and their new assignments on the Pluto mission. Panel participants include:

o Moderator: David Grinspoon, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona
o Fran Bagenal, University of Colorado, Boulder
o Bonnie Buratti, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
o Jeffrey Moore, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
o John Spencer, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado

Media and the public can also ask questions via social media using #askNASA.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit: www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information on New Horizons on the Internet, visit: www.nasa.gov/newhorizons

[ Update: Panel videos can be seen here.]

New Horizons probe sees Charon orbiting Pluto

The  New Horizons spacecraft is steadily closing in on Pluto as it heads for a fly-by next July. The spacecraft can now distinguish Pluto from its moon Charon with its long range camera.

New Horizons Spies Charon Orbiting Pluto

PR_E12_proper_nosat_3fpsPluto and Charon dance in this sequence of images taken
over 6 days. (Large image)

Like explorers of old peering through a shipboard telescope for a faint glimpse of their destination, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is taking a distant look at the Pluto system – in preparation for its historic encounter with the planet and its moons next summer.

“Filmed” with New Horizons’ best onboard telescope – the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) – this movie covers Pluto and almost one full rotation of its largest moon, Charon. The 12 images that make up the movie were taken July 19-24, from a distance ranging from about 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million kilometers). Charon is orbiting approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

New Horizons snapped this image sequence as part of the mission’s first optical navigation campaign. The mission team uses these “op nav” images – which focus on Pluto’s position against a backdrop of stars – to fine-tune the distance that New Horizons will fly past Pluto and its moons. New Horizons is aiming for a precise close-approach point near Pluto in July 2015, so these and images to come – which help navigators and mission designers to get a better fix on Pluto’s position – are critical to planning the encounter operations.

Pluto’s four smaller satellites (Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos) are too faint to be seen in these distant images, but will begin to appear in images taken next year as the spacecraft speeds closer to its target.

“The image sequence showing Charon revolving around Pluto set a record for close range imaging of Pluto—they were taken from 10 times closer to the planet than the Earth is,” says New Horizons mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. “But we’ll smash that record again and again, starting in January, as approach operations begin.

“We are really excited to see our target and its biggest satellite in motion from our own perch,” he adds, “less than a year from the historic encounter ahead!”

As August begins, New Horizons is near the end of its final pre-Pluto annual systems checkout and instrument calibration before Pluto arrival. The New Horizons mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will put the spacecraft back into hibernation on August 29 – just four days after New Horizons crosses the orbit of Neptune on August 25.

That final “rest” lasts only until December 6, when New Horizons will stay wake for two years of Pluto encounter preparations, flyby operations, and data downlinks. Distant-encounter operations begin January 4, 2015.

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See also New Horizons spies Pluto and Charon, July 2014 – The Planetary Society