NASA's New Horizons' Flyby of Pluto

[LoweGear]

[BBC] New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

And our first and clearest image of Pluto yet comes to light:



I get a feeling that heart is gonna be quite popular in the future.

[Flower]

Looks kinda like a footprint to me at first glance. ^^

Even so, this is a lovely photo.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Keeping up with humanity's tradition of seeing shapes where they don't belong....

Images

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[james0246]

^That's beautiful. Thank you internet.

So it looks very...I don't know dusty? Dirty? Definitely looks like a bit of smudging covering the planetoid.

Still, it is nice to complete the set, giving us a nice view of the final major object in our solar system (not counting Eris, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, the Kuniper Belt and the Oort Cloud, and maybe Sedna - though I'm not sure if that object is part of our solar system).

[Marcus H.]

It looks rather smooth compared to the Moon or most of the known rocky satellites in the Solar System.
I guess there's a smaller concentration of large enough crater-inducing objects in that region.

[LoweGear]

Bioware's tweet on the matter is LOL

[james0246]

Personally I was wondering if one of the scientists would have the Satellite probe Charon just to see if a Relay appears...

[ChainLegacy]

Originally Posted by james0246

^That's beautiful. Thank you internet.

So it looks very...I don't know dusty? Dirty? Definitely looks like a bit of smudging covering the planetoid.

Still, it is nice to complete the set, giving us a nice view of the final major object in our solar system (not counting Eris, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, the Kuniper Belt and the Oort Cloud, and maybe Sedna - though I'm not sure if that object is part of our solar system).

Given the extreme distance of Pluto, though, it now makes reaching even Sedna seem very much within humanity's grasp if we were to fund such a venture - I feel like even though Sedna is three times more distant than Pluto, it's more a matter of funding than capability. Given that Sedna's orbit suggests another large planet (Earth sized potentially) is potentially out there even further, we still have plenty of mysteries to explore.

EDIT: I just looked it up and there's actually the possibility for New Horizons itself to visit Sedna.

The mission is now speeding onwards into the Kuiper belt where it will examine one or two of the ancient icy objects in the vast region. Potential Kuiper belt objects that it might visit include Quaoar, Eris, Makemake, Haumea and Sedna. In coming months, scientists will decide the spacecraft’s next flyby target and send signals from Earth to New Horizons to thrust its rockets to tweak its trajectory.

Full Article Here

[Dop]

What we've had so far are just the first glimpses, which have given us more information on Pluto than ever before.
Apparently it'll take something like 16 months for all the data to be transmitted back, because everything's coming at about the same kind of bitrate you got from a dial-up modem in the early 80s.

I reckon there'll be many more new discoveries turning up in the next few years as the data is received and analysed.

The sad thing is that if they started work today on designing and building an orbiter to carry out more prolonged observation, it'd be getting on for thirty years before it arrived.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by ChainLegacy

Given the extreme distance of Pluto, though, it now makes reaching even Sedna seem very much within humanity's grasp if we were to fund such a venture - I feel like even though Sedna is three times more distant than Pluto, it's more a matter of funding than capability. Given that Sedna's orbit suggests another large planet (Earth sized potentially) is potentially out there even further, we still have plenty of mysteries to explore.

EDIT: I just looked it up and there's actually the possibility for New Horizons itself to visit Sedna.



Full Article Here

Given how far out Sedna's orbit is.....maybe our ghosts will bear witness to the event when it finally happens XDD

[Ithekro]

Or the first Faster than Light probe will beat it there.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Stephen Colbert with Neil deGrasse Tyson about Pluto

EDIT:

NASA’s New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’

In the latest data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature, informally named “Tombaugh Regio” (Tombaugh Region) after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

“This terrain is not easy to explain,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations.”

This fascinating icy plains region -- resembling frozen mud cracks on Earth -- has been informally named “Sputnik Planum” (Sputnik Plain) after the Earth’s first artificial satellite. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs. Some of these troughs have darker material within them, while others are traced by clumps of hills that appear to rise above the surrounding terrain. Elsewhere, the surface appears to be etched by fields of small pits that may have formed by a process called sublimation, in which ice turns directly from solid to gas, just as dry ice does on Earth.