New Horizons: Voyage to Pluto.

[Greenlantern101]

Next target selected.

NASA’s New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target

 

[Incubus]

When's the next NASA TV briefing on Pluto again? I seem to remember it's supposed to arrive sometime at the end of September but I can't quite remember now... With data having been continually downloaded over the past month-and-a-half we should be getting quite a few more high-resolution images. Looking forward to that.

 

[Greenlantern101]

There are many issues slowing things down.
1 kb transmission rate is the main one. But data processing has some bumps on the ground as well.
This blog also suggests that processed images are being held back so the Pluto team aren't 'scooped' by other scientists, which is why the raw image downloads page has very little on it. See below.

I suspect it will be nearer the end of the year after reading that blog. I hope not.

Raw image site.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php?page=1

 

[Greenlantern101]

New images at last. Ice flows, mountains, dunes and ancient craters all in the same image. Amazing.

New Pluto Images from NASA’s New Horizons: It’s Complicated

 

[Titch]

That is quite amazing. I'm assuming that Pluto has now been reinstated as a planet? Or as a moon. Although who's moon it might be wouldn't be clear.

 

[Greenlantern101]

I think it will remain classified as a dwarf planet. Its strange orbit can't ever qualify it for major planet status.

 

[soccerman17]

Also its size

 

[Incubus]

Well I've just decided we don't actually live on a planet. I mean, look at the Earth, it's even tinier compared to Jupiter than Pluto is to the Earth.

 

[Incubus]

By the way there's new pics of Charon too, with its odd-looking red pole:

Pictures are gonna start coming on a fairly regular basis now.

 

[Incubus]

Coming thick and fast now...

 

[Greenlantern101]

More from Pluto

 

[Titch]

I wonder what that red stuff is.

 

[Dash Racing]

Oxidized iron deposits, possibly?

 

[Titch]

Probably even. But we can't be sure.

 

[Incubus]

NASA are set to announce an "amazing" discovery about the Pluto system tomorrow.

Wonder what it could be?

 

[Incubus]

In the meantime I thought I'd post a selection of the highest resolution images of Charon yet, as well a couple of Nix and Hydra:

(enhanced colour)

 

[Greenlantern101]

Charon definitely looks like it broke in half and was then badly glued back together in a Friday afternoon rush job.

 

[Incubus]

Or... maybe it actually is in the process of continually breaking itself apart right now in a process powered by whatever's happening under its surface? Like, say, flows of liquid water beneath the surface?

Getting a bit ahead of myself here but they did say "amazing news" so given the secrecy they're keeping things in until tomorrow it's gotta be something big, whatever that is.

 

[Titch]

SO any ideas yet? I mean have Nasa said what the big news is?

 

[Incubus]

Give them a break Titch, at the time of your posting it was about 7 AM over there. Let 'em smell the coffee at least. You really are pitiless aren't you?