Pluto In The Headlights
Color Images Reveal Two Distinct Faces of Pluto, NASA
“New color images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show two very different faces of the mysterious dwarf planet, one with a series of intriguing spots along the equator that are evenly spaced. Each of the spots is about 300 miles in diameter, with a surface area that’s roughly the size of the state of Missouri.”
New Horizons Stays the Course to Pluto, NASA
“After seven weeks of detailed searches for dust clouds, rings, and other potential hazards, the New Horizons team has decided the spacecraft will remain on its original path through the Pluto system instead of making a late course correction to detour around any hazards. Because New Horizons is traveling at 30,800 mph (49,600 kph), a particle as small as a grain of rice could be lethal.”
Looks like a blurry picture of the 1909 Lincoln Cent photo target on the Mars Rover. 😉
About 56 years since the first lunar fly by. Now we are about to see Pluto and Sharon. I was born in 1955. I guess that means have lived through the age off solar system discovery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
Notice the flat horizon! The Earth is not a sphere! It’s flat!
Yeah, I know, but I’ve seen this picture used to make this very argument on Flat Earth websites. The idea being NASA wasn’t around yet to tamper with pictures to make the horizon look round.
I posted the picture because I was surprised to see a picture of earth this high up in the forties.
Von Braun’s V2 could have been used for sub orbital tourism. Guidance was a bit of a headache.
I was thinking how disappointed Von Braun would be if he could see how little launch has progressed since his death.
Now that we have visited the all the planet’s of the Solar system, WHAT NEXT?
The SLS dark ages?
Here why exploring will get rare soon
https://blogs.nasa.gov/Rock…
No place to comment on his NASA propaganda blog??
What exactly does that have to do with New Horizons approaching Pluto?
Just because all of the planets will have been visited doesn’t mean that all is done or exploration is finished.
Very much agree!!!
Next up we’ll get to explore Texas, Alabama, and Florida with SLS money. Landing sites in all three states.
Don’t knock the Texas exploration initiative. Texas is still not comprehensively understood.
It is also the case that the outer planets have hardly been explored in any meaningful sense of the word- Uranus and Neptune, I mean.
I was very surprised by the ‘Pluto Time’ app from the New Horizons boys that allowed an estimate of the amount of sunlight at Pluto ‘High Noon’ by giving a time of day on earth where the sunlight would be similar. I mention this because while I’ve always (wrongly) considered those tow outer planets to be extremely dark and low energy, this might not be the case.
There is a LOT more to explore.
V2 flew about 3000 flights. I wonder what its “safety record” was?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
Very interesting question. The Encyclopedia Astronautica gives a success rate of 78%, with a figure of 950 known failures.
http://www.astronautix.com/…
Here are links to Life magazine space related articles that are scanned and can be read in the Google book archive (Including that 1946 V2 Earth photo):
LIFE magazine – Dec 25, 1944 – V-2 Nazi rocket details are finally revealed
https://books.google.com/bo…
LIFE magazine – May 27, 1946 – U.S. tests rockets in New Mexico
https://books.google.com/bo…
LIFE magazine – Dec 2, 1946 – FROM 65 MILES UP the surface of the earth looks like this.
https://books.google.com/bo…
Life Magazine Space Related Articles 1939 – 1973
http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
New Horizons has already detected methane lakes on Pluto, and discoveries on Pluto and Charon will only get better. I can’t wait. Only 13.5 million km to go.
Methane lakes they certainly aren’t. Neither methane nor any other plausible substance has a liquid phase anywhere near Pluto’s surface temp and (more importantly) pressure.
Yep. I should have said frozen methane.
If I had to guess, I would say that the methane ice would show up lighter, and the dark equatorial areas might be where it is absent. Perhaps those regions are too warm to condense it out of the atmosphere. Similar albedo-based segregation of ices has been proposed as the origin of dramatic light and dark regions on Iapetus. But what are the dark areas then? Tholins?
There’s always the possibility of cryo-vulcanism… Personally speaking: “Its orange!” Tholins?
WØØt!
The spots remind me of the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact. If that’s what it is the next question would be how long ago. You would want to observe the spots over time to help determine that. But I wonder realistically how many decades before there will be another fly-by mission to Pluto. And how long before orbit, and later landing. I realize the same can be said for several other objects in the solar system. DTARS your photo from 1946 was almost seventy years ago. Seems like we should be much farther along. So much more to learn just in our own backyard.
That being said I am in awe that we are finally getting photos of Pluto, this is incredible.
I’m really looking forward to learning more about the origin of Pluto’s moons. Right now, I’m leaning towards a similar origin as to that of Luna – A large collision ejects lighter material that conglomerates into Charon and the smaller moonlets coming from smaller density cores, possible due to the lower overall gravity of the system that was less efficient in gathering the ejecta. That said, there is reason to suggest that some of Earth’s co-orbital NEOs may be former moonlets from the Moon-forming epoch, ejected into distinct orbits by the Earth/Moon system’s much greater combined gravity.
If confirmed, it would make Pluto and Earth cousins in a strange kind of way. It may provide a lot of data in the field of moon-forming processes. It is possible that a lot of moons of terrestrial-type planets (possibly all) form in this way.
Pluto the Movie!
http://www.nasa.gov/nh/plut…