New Horizons Shows Off New Color Faces of Pluto

[ArsalanKhan21]

Pluto looks more like earth then mars does

Mars had more water than Pluto billion years ago but lost it to space since it is closer to the Sun than Pluto so water evaporates but Mars gravity cannot keep the water molecules and slowly they are lost to the space. Pluto's water is frozen since it is pretty far from the sun so it still retains water ice despite its even lower gravity.

 

[Fenrir]

Mars had more water than Pluto billion years ago but lost it to space since it is closer to the Sun than Pluto so water evaporates but Mars gravity cannot keep the water molecules and slowly they are lost to the space. Pluto's water is frozen since it is pretty far from the sun so it still retains water ice despite its even lower gravity.

Even then Pluto is hemorrhaging water, and at a significant rate (based on preliminary estimates, as the article notes these are likely to be revised) due to atmospheric degradation - as the atmosphere is torn away, some atmospheric particles interact with those on the surface and dislodge them. But yes, the circumstance differs from Mars and its condition:

Pluto's Atmosphere is Billowing Away into Space

Pluto just can’t stop blowing our minds. Not only is it a geologically active world with ice mountains the size of the Rockies and frozen plains of methane and nitrogen, we’ve just learned that Pluto’s atmosphere is pouring away into space. It’s leaving a massive tail of charged plasma in its wake.

That’s one of the latest fascinating Pluto dispatches that NASA’s New Horizons science team shared at a press conference this afternoon. Beginning an hour and a half after its closest approach to Pluto on Tuesday, the New Horizon’s Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument began detecting a ‘plasma tail,’ rich in ionized nitrogen molecules that are presumably being stripped away from the dwarf planet’s atmosphere.

The tail, which extends tens of thousands of miles beyond Pluto, is probably the result of solar winds charging up molecules in the planet’s atmosphere and punting them off into space.

Or, in NASA’s words: “What we think is happening is that the solar wind from the sun—charged particles streaming out at supersonic speeds—are interacting with this escaping atmosphere, producing a shock upstream.”

“We’ve already observed an upstream amount of energized nitrogen ions carried away by the solar wind,” said New Horizons co-investigator Fran Bagenal at today’s press conference.

How fast of a leak are we talking? According to Bagenal, Pluto could be losing atmosphere at a rate of 500 tons per hour. For comparison, Mars’ thin atmosphere is only escaping into space at a speed of roughly 1 ton per hour. The substantially faster loss of Pluto’s atmosphere is probably due to the tiny planet’s weak gravity.

But these numbers are just rough estimates at this point. So far, all we know is that there’s a massive, ionized bubble of particles surrounding Pluto, and we can make some good inferences about how it got there. When we get more data back in August, Pluto’s science team will be able to put some hard numbers to this fascinating phenomenon.

So far, Pluto’s atmosphere appears to be pretty symmetric all the way around the planet, extending from the ground to at least a thousand miles above the surface. At its highest altitudes, the atmosphere is dominated by molecular nitrogen. Lower down, we’re starting to catch whiffs of methane, and very near the surface, larger hydrocarbon molecules.

Although there’s still much to learn, the science team is already pondering the implications of the atmosphere’s fast escape. If you add up the current estimated escape rate of Pluto’s atmosphere over the age of the solar system, Bagenal says it’s equivalent to thousands of feet of nitrogen ice steaming off the surface. It’s possible that geysers or cryovolcanoes are helping replenish the atmosphere quickly, although we don’t have observational evidence for those phenomena just yet.

If one thing’s clear at this point, it’s that Pluto is way more dynamic than we could have possibly imagined. And that it still has a lot of secrets to give up.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Around The Universe: Ariane 5 Launch, New Horizons Reaches Pluto, And Jupiter Has A Twin - Forbes

Jul 18, 2015 @ 6:11 PM
Around The Universe: Ariane 5 Launch, New Horizons Reaches Pluto, And Jupiter Has A Twin
Alex Knapp

Taking a look back at the past seven days of breathtaking discoveries and images being gathered from space, this week’s Around The Universe features stories on the Earth, the space station, Ceres, Pluto and beyond.

Around The Universe is here to highlight a few of the coolest images, discoveries, and human activities taking place in the final frontier over the past seven days.

On Earth: Ariane 5 Launches Two Satellites

On July 15th, European launch company Arianespace successfully launched its sixth rocket of 2015, meeting the halfway point for its goal of launching 12 rockets in 2015. On board the rocket were two satellites, a Star One C4 telecommunications satellite and a Eumetsat MSG-4 weather satellite.

Your Online Reputation Management: Ignoring Customer Reviews Won't Make Them Go Away
From The Space Station: Storm Chasing From Orbit



Also on July 15th, astronaut Scott Kelly snapped this photo of Tropical Storm Bill as it approached the coast of Texas. The station astronauts also had a “storm” of their own when they took cover in an attached Soyuz craft out of concern a piece of space debris might hit the station. (It didn’t hit and the astronauts are fine now.)

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The Sun: STEREO-A Is Back In Action

(Image Credit: NASA/STEREO)

This image of the Sun is from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the STEREO-A probe, colorized blue. The STEREO-A probe, which is engaged in solar observations, was out of contact with NASA for three months as it traveled on the far side of the Sun out of line of sight from Earth. This week, STEREO-A emerged from the other side of the Sun just fine and is back to sending solar images to NASA.

Ceres: Dawn Probe Readies Its Closeup

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

This photo of the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres was taken by the Dawn spacecraft at an altitude of 2,700 miles. Over the next five weeks, the Dawn probe will be slowly moving to a much lower orbital altitude of 900 miles. The closeup will enable much clearer, high-resolution photos of Ceres.

Cassini: Titan And Saturn Together; Getting Pluto Fever

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The Cassini probe took this amazing picture of Saturn and its Moon, Titan, on April 18th, but the image was just released by NASA on July 18th. The probe also joined in the Pluto fever accompanying New Horizons’ historic flyby by snapping the photo below of the distant dwarf planet from Saturn.

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Pluto: New Horizons Makes Historic Flyby!



On July 14, the New Horizons made its historic close approach to Pluto, taking some of the clearest photos of the planet ever. We’ll be seeing new pictures of Pluto and beyond for months due to the time it takes data to get to Earth. But in the few days since, some incredible photos have already been released by the New Horizons’ team.

(Image Credit: NASA)

The photo above shows a range of mountains on Pluto, indicating that the planet is likely geologically active. Right now, though, it’s not clear to scientists how that geological activity happens, which leaves a lot of room for study and discovery.

(Image Credit: NASA)

Pluto’s now-famous heart-shaped region is showed in a close up photo above. This vast, craterless plain is another hint at geological activity on Pluto – possibly even tectonic activity.

Charon: A Mountain In A Moat

(Image Credit: NASA)

In addition to Pluto, New Horizons also captured images of Pluto’s moons, and will continue to take photos of other bodies as it continues traveling through the Kuiper Belt. The above photo of Pluto’s moon Charon shows an unusual geological feature – a mountain in a deep depression that resembles a moat. The unusual feature may have been the effect of a meteor impact on the moon’s ice-covered surface.

Beyond Pluto: Jupiter Has A Twin


Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have published a paper indicating that they’ve found a planet about the same size as Jupiter orbiting the star HIP 11915, which is about 186 light years from Earth. What makes this finding even more interesting is that HIP 11915 is almost a twin of our Sun, of a similar size and spectral type. What’s more, the Jupiter-sized world is also located about the same distance from its star.

These parallels lead astronomers to wonder if it’s possible HIP 11915 has a planetary system similar to our own. And Star Trek fans may take this news and wonder whether Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development has more to it than an excuse to re-use sets from other properties. More study of the system is needed to answer these questions, though.

In The Galaxy: A Fresh Look At The Quintuplet Cluster

(Image credit: ESA/NASA)

The photo above shows a Hubble image, colorized from infrared, of the Quintuplet Cluster. This cluster is located just about 100 light-years away from the center of the Galaxy and is filled with hundreds of stars. It includes two luminous blue variable stars, which are pretty rare throughout the universe. The Cluster wasn’t discovered until 1990, because dust in the center of the galaxy obscures light in the visible range.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.

 

[Bratva]

The New Horizons spacecraft is currently out of contact with Earth as it continues its observations. It can either transmit data or store observations. It will be transmitting data and new photos later today.

Here's why it takes so long to beam data back from Pluto

• JULIA CALDERONE
  

• Jul. 14, 2015, 6:11 PM
• 19,294

• FACEBOOK
• LINKEDIN
• TWITTER
• EMAIL
• 600 to 1,200 bits per second, or about 50 to 100 times slower than the speed of a modern cable modem.
  
  "At the data rate we have ... it takes over 2 hours to downlink a standard picture from your cell phone! That means we will spend the next 16 months transmitting all the data down to Earth," Curt Niebur, a NASA program scientist, wrote during aReddit "Ask Me Anything" thread.
  
  For this very reason, we're going to have to wait hours, days, even months before we get the best, full-sized, high-resolution images from Pluto.
  
  How the data delay works
  New Horizons talks to Earth through a system of four antennas. These allow the spacecraft to transmit raw data, receive commands, send status updates, and deliver tracking information.
  
  
  
  NASA/JPL-CaltechTechnicians fit-check New Horizons's antenna system.
  
  But the paltry bandwidth of the antennas means New Horizons has to save data locally until it can beam it to Earth. For that reason, it's equipped with two solid-state recorders.
  
  Each recorder can collect, compress, sort, and store about 8 gigabytes of data, much in the same way digital cameras store photos to a flash memory card. (Except we'll never get them back to plug into a computer on Earth.)
  
  New Horizons was scheduled to record an unprecedented amount of measurements and photos with its suite of seven instruments Tuesday morning.
  
  How long it will take to trickle that data back to Earth seems a little uncertain. Although Niebur said it'll take 16 months, a NASA press kit states it will take about 9 months.
  
  Either way, we should start to see something tantalizing soon.
  
  "Tomorrow [Wednesday] we'll see images that are 10 times higher resolution" than those taken right before the flyby, said Alan Stern, principle investigator of the New Horizons team, during a live webcast on NASA TV.
  
  For most of the mission, New Horizons will use an 83-inch-wide "high-gain" antenna, which sits on its top deck to communicate with NASA. It takes about four hours and 25 minutes for a radio signal from that antenna to reach New Horizons from Earth, and vice versa. The signals can move only as fast as the speed of light, and the spacecraft is far enough away that it takes them that long to travel.
  
  "The one thing I wish we had beefed up on this spacecraft is the antenna to send back the data a little quicker," Fran Bagel, a New Horizons co-investigator, said during an American Museum of Natural History webcast on Tuesday. "But forget it. It's too small an object that's too far away."
  
  The first images of Pluto might start coming in tonight, but not until NASA first receives a signal confirming the flyby was a success. That signal won't arrive until around 9 p.m. ET.
  
  Until then, we have a couple of new images of Pluto — and rampant speculation about them — to pore over.
  
  
  
  Read more: Why does it take so long for New Horizons to send photos? - Business Insider

 

[monitor]

 

[500]

Another Pluto closeup:

Pluto's small moons:

Suprised you take 10-15 years to travel to pluto and not launch a satellite to permanently orbit

New Horizons was launched in Jan 2006, so it took about 9,5 years to Pluto.

Voyager 2 which was launched in Aug 1977 reached Neptune in Aug 1989 so it took 12 years.

So New Horizons was very fast

 

[Menace2Society]

Okay bored of Pluto. Can we zoom into Uranus now?

 

[ssethii]

There are no signs of water anywhere except earth, all of them are just theories. Even they had something similar about moon back then.

 

[Fenrir]

There are no signs of water anywhere except earth, all of them are just theories.

No. Earth's water itself came from off planet and, and considering water has been found and measured on other bodies off of Earth there is ample evidence to support water's existence in space:

Most of Earth's Water Came from Asteroids, Not Comets

Rosetta Spacecraft's Comet Water Discovery: What It Means for Earth

You can always take this concern up with NASA if you'd like:

NASA - Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water

Or more recently NASA's Curiosity:

Nasa's Curiosity rover finds water below surface of Mars

The hole drilled into this rock target, called "Cumberland," was made by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on May 19, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity Rover Drills Into Mars Rock, Finds Water

 

[ssethii]

No. Earth's water itself came from off planet and, and considering water has been found and measured on other bodies off of Earth there is ample evidence to support water's existence off of Earth:

Most of Earth's Water Came from Asteroids, Not Comets

Rosetta Spacecraft's Comet Water Discovery: What It Means for Earth

You can always take this concern up with NASA if you'd like:

NASA - Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water

Or more recently NASA's Curiosity:

Nasa's Curiosity rover finds water below surface of Mars | Science | The Guardian

I beg to differ on this. In this solar system no other heavenly body has water in it. We had interaction with many in those years and didn't find any evidence. I am very skeptical about any future discovery..