Investigating Pluto's Atmosphere
Randy Gladstone, New Horizons' Co-Investigator with a focus on atmospheric study, is a man on a "mission of delayed gratification," as he puts it. The observations that New Horizons will make relevant to his field are some of the most precise of the closest approach sequence, and the wealth of data they produce may not be . . .
Closest Approach Sequencing for New Horizons
Alice Bowman, Mission Operations Manager for New Horizons, spoke Sunday about some of the nuts and bolts of the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto.
With signals sent between spacecraft and Earth taking four and a half hours to reach their destination, it's worth keeping in mind whether the perspective for a given event . . .
Last Look At A Strange Landscape
Yesterday, just three days from its closest encounter with Pluto, New Horizons had its last opportunity to image the hemisphere that will be facing away from it when it passes by. A Plutonian day is long by our standards -- the dwarf planet takes about six Earth days to rotate once about its axis -- so New Horizons will be passing by too . . .
New Horizons Flashback: The Launch
Last Saturday, on the 4th of July, mission engineers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland scrambled to determine why New Horizons had entered safe mode after briefly ceasing communications with Earth. The spacecraft, only 10 days away from its historic encounter with Pluto, had experienced a critical error while . . .
Postcards from Dawn's Survey Orbit
The Dawn spacecraft, currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt, set out on this leg of its mission with four planned orbits from which to observe and investigate. All of them were polar orbits, with the spacecraft traveling up one face of and over the north pole, and down the opposite face and over the south pole, to . . .
Recovered Video From Fairing on DSCOVR Mission
Possible correction: There is some debate as to which launch the recovered fairing came from. I'm leaving in the parts that pertain to the DSCOVR launch unless it's conclusively determined to be from some other launch.
On 11 February of this year, NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) probe launched into orbit on . . .
The Strangeness of the Pluto System
Gravitational Resonances and Unexpected Albedos
Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, as discussed in a recent post, have a dynamic that's somewhat unique in the solar system. Like all planet-moon systems, they actually rotate around their shared center of mass, a point called the "barycenter," as they travel around the Sun. Unlike most planet-moon systems, Pluto and Charon are . . .
Cover image credit: http://jleslie48.com/0206pr/saturn5allclean2.jpg
