Space & Planetary Science

Dealing With Pluto's Debris

By Keith Cowing

NASA Watch

May 20, 2013

Filed under Pluto

The PI’s Perspective: Encounter Planning Accelerates, JHUAPL
“We’ve now largely completed that work and presented the results to both an independent, NASA-appointed technical review team, led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Keyur Patel, and then to senior executives at NASA Headquarters. Both groups have concurred with our findings…”
Keith’s note: I would have posted this news earlier but both SwRI and JHUAPL simply refuse to place me on their media distribution lists (yes, I have asked more than once). In addition, NASA SMD has not issued anything on this either. That is not surprising given their foot dragging in response to my last request on this topic.
NASA Finally Responds To Simple Questions About the New Horizons Mission to Pluto (January 2013) earlier post
“Three months ago I asked the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) some simple questions regarding possible changes to the New Horizons encounter with Pluto based on recent data indicating debris in the region. I was told that I’d get a prompt reply. SMD PAO finally got around to responding to me today after three months of silence. One would think that these answers would be simple to provide – and based on standard mission operating procedures. Guess not.”
Will NASA Have To ‘Bail Out’ On Close Pluto Encounter?, (October 2012)

Keith Cowing

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member 🖖🏻

2 responses to “Dealing With Pluto's Debris”

Mader Levap says:

May 21, 2013 at 9:47 am

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Seems like “bail out” was very unfortunate choice of words.
hikingmike says:

May 23, 2013 at 7:22 pm

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“New Horizons benefits from its approach trajectory because that trajectory is steeply inclined to Pluto’s satellite plane and associated debris hazards that models show should lie close to the satellite plane.”

If it is going to hit something, it will almost certainly be only when it is passing through Pluto’s satellite plane, and New Horizons is basically traveling perpendicular.

The Pluto system appears to be far safer than early fears and initial calculations indicated when the new moons began popping up. In fact, the best current models predict a 0.3% (1-in-300) chance of a mission-ending impact near closest approach on the nominal trajectory.

The baselined New Horizons closest-approach aim point is one of the safest possible aim points – if not the safest aim point – in the Pluto system.

So we should do it even if there was a higher risk.

Pretty cool that Pluto’s moon Charon clears this aim point of debris within months of any new debris occurring.