New Horizons: Voyage to Pluto.

[Greenlantern101]

Its on | NASA

 

[Greenlantern101]

First super close up of Pluto. No impact craters in that image. Pluto is active.

Edit: Those mountains are 11,000 feet high and made of water ice.

 

[Greenlantern101]

The canyon on the far right is 6 miles deep. The cliffs band across the middle are 600 miles long. The dark regoin has been nicknamed mordor.

 

[Greenlantern101]

Higher resolution photos will come later but this is the first image of Plutos moon Hydra that isn't just 2 pixels.
Each pixel in this image is 2 miles across.

 

[Greenlantern101]

 

[Incubus]

Next news conference from the New Horizon team on NASA TV is on at 1PM tomorrow so 6PM here in the UK. The teeam will have been going through a couple days' data processing by then so the pictures will only get better and better from now,andd keeep on coming over the next 18 months or so.

Incredible to think that these systems billions of miles away are being powered by batteries less powerful than those in your mobile phone...

 

[Dash Racing]

Water ice on a geologically active Pluto means life is possible, based on what little we really know about the conditions needed for life to exist. I think it's a certainty that another mission to Pluto will be planned. Sadly, none of us will live to see the results. Still, there's months and months of analysis to read and enjoy to whet the appetites of the kids who'll be old farts by the time the mission gets there

 

[cider_and_toast]

Hey Captain Cheerful, NASA could have a lander on Pluto inside 20 years. 10 years of planning and 9 years to get there. I'd be in my early 60's by then.

 

[FB]

I know this is an old chestnut, and as fascinating as these pictures of a far off world are, what is the point? In the grand scheme of things this venture wasn't very expensive at $700 million but what have we really learned by slinging a piece of metal into the outer reaches of the solar system for 9 1/2 years? Hasn't made my commute to work any quicker. Hasn't come up with a cure for the common cold. hasn't solved the problems in the Middle East of the EU fiscal crisis.

Come on World, stop pissing money down the drain on vanity projects and start supplying fresh water to people in India and Africa or give sex education and birth control to third world countries (or first world even).

Sorry, this should be in the rant thread.

 

[Incubus]

Well it depends on what timescale you're referring to. When we look and understand how alien planets have formed, evolved and become the way they are today it helps understanding the evolution of our own. And why it might one day become necessary for future generations in a few thousand years to have to leave it double-quick and try their luck on another.

 

[Titch]

Our curiosity is what drives us forward, if we weren't curious creatures we still wouldn't realise that we can get water from any other source but the water we can see. You certainly wouldn't be commuting to work, or spending money. We would be sitting around doing nothing very much, just existing.

 

[FB]

Not convinced.

 

[Incubus]

I know it's not quite the same topic but some of the most important breakthroughs in the fight against some diseases have been carried out onboard the international space station. Because drug experimentation is easier to conduct in a weightless environment at molecular level. The japanese section in particular have developped a whole range of medications that prolong the lives of some terminaly ill patient by a good 20 years. I can't remember which illness I saw that feature about but it regarded a genetic disorder that normally causes affected patient to die by their twenties. Patients treated by the drug developped by the Kapanese onboard the space section have now had their life expectency boosted well into their forties.

 

[Dash Racing]

Hey Captain Cheerful, NASA could have a lander on Pluto inside 20 years. 10 years of planning and 9 years to get there. I'd be in my early 60's by then.

It could... but it probably won't, because people keep asking what the point of these space missions are, and that means the budget keeps shrinking.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Never mind, we can all go back to watching car companies pissing billions up the wall paying a venture capital company to race around a track. That will cheers us all up. Then again, perhaps not.

 

[soccerman17]

I know this is an old chestnut, and as fascinating as these pictures of a far off world are, what is the point?

This will probably never help us firsthand but studies have proven that space missions help improve economies. The money spent helps, but more so the development of new technologies needed for the construction of the spacecraft itself.

 

[Greenlantern101]

 

[Incubus]

More to come tomorrow in the next news conference from the New Horizon team at 2PM (7PM UK time).

 

[Greenlantern101]

Nitrogen Glacers on Pluto. Wow. Oh and it has a much thicker atomosphere than predicted.

“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really smiling.”

And to think everyone expected a dead icy planet.

NASA’s New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto

 

[Titch]

We have found the home of the little green men at last.