Cheers, whoops and flag waving broke out at NASAs New Horizons control centre on July 14th 2015, as scientists celebrated the spacecraft’s dramatic flyby of Pluto, considered the last unexplored world in the solar system.
The probe shot past at more than 28,000 mph (45,000 km/h) at 12.49pm BST (7.49am ET) on a trajectory that brought the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth’s orbit within 7,770 miles (12,391 km) of Pluto’s surface.
The moment, played out on July 14th 2015, to the sound of The Final Countdown by the 1980s glam metal band Europe, marked a historic achievement for the US, which can now claim to be the only nation to have visited every planet in the classical solar system.
Bristling with cameras and other instruments, the New Horizons probe was programmed to gather a wealth of images and data as it sped past Pluto and its five small moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Hydra and Kerberos.
Images beamed back from New Horizons have shown Pluto in shades of red and orange, with hints of valleys, mountains and craters. On July 14th 2015, NASA released a new image of Pluto. The picture was taken at about 9pm BST (4pm ET) on July 13th 2015, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles (766,047 km) from the surface.
Though Pluto has a varied terrain, with dark patches on the equator and brighter regions to the north, its surface looks younger and smoother than that of its largest moon, Charon. The reason may be geological activity, which refreshes the body’s surface.
Mission scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore were out of contact with the spacecraft as it hurtled past the icy body 3bn miles from Earth. Instead the probe captured images and took measurements automatically and stored them on board to send back later.
At such a great distance, direct control from the ground is impossible, because radio signals take more than nine hours to travel to the spacecraft and back again. It will take 16 months to beam all of New Horizon’s data back to Earth.
Scientists now face an agonising wait for news from the spacecraft, which is due to call home at 2am BST Wednesday (9pm ET Tuesday). Only when that 15 minute-long signal is received will NASA officials know whether New Horizons survived the flyby.
One of the greatest hazards the spacecraft faces is dust that may form a hazy cloud around Pluto after being knocked off its moons by meteorite strikes. Hal Weaver, a scientist on the mission, said that colliding with a dust particle the size of a grain of rice could potentially destroy the mission. But the risk of such a catastrophic failure was low, at less than one in 10,000.
New Horizons blasted off in January 2006, carrying the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. Several months later, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union voted to change the definition of the word “planet”, a move that downgraded Pluto to the more diminutive “dwarf planet”. The flyby may resurrect the debate and see Pluto restored to full planetary status.
In a live interview on NASA TV on Tuesday, Charles Bolden, NASAs chief administrator, said he hoped the scientists would reconsider the name. “I call it a planet, but I’m not the rule maker,” he said, adding that arguments over Pluto’s status should not detract from the achievement. “It should be a day of incredible pride.”
Pluto lies in a region of space at the edge of the solar system called the Kuiper belt. Astronomers call it the third zone of space. The first zone contains the rocky, terrestrial planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The second zone is home to the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Alongside the Pluto system in the Kuiper belt are comets and more than 100,000 miniature worlds.
New Horizons is expected to continue its mission into the Kuiper belt. The spacecraft is powered by a nuclear generator that runs on plutonium, a substance named after the dwarf planet. The generator should run until the 2030s, when New Horizons will be 100 times further away than Earth is from the sun.
--CREDITS--
This film was made possible through contributions from New Horizons mission partners Aerojet Rocketdyne, Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance & mixedmultimedia®
Visual Director: Erik Wernquist
4K Executive Producer: Mark Daniels
Visual Artists: Mikael Hall, Kim Nicosia, Erik Wernquist
Composer: Cristian Sandquist
Colorist: Caj Müller/Beckholmen Film
Soundmix: Håkan Nilsson/Hajp
Photos and textures: NASA/JPL/CICLOPS/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualisation Studio/mixedmultimedia®
***************************************
Copyright ©℗ 2009-2015 mixedmultimedia® & NASA
All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés - Alle rechten voorbehouden - Alle rechten reserviert - Todos los derechos reservados
