Countdown to Pluto

[agent46]

One of the fastest spacecraft ever built—NASA's New Horizons—is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and it is nearing its destination: Pluto.

"The encounter begins next January," says Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute and the mission's principal investigator. "We're less than a year away."

Closest approach is scheduled for July 2015 when New Horizons flies only 10,000 km from Pluto, but the spacecraft will be busy long before that date. The first step, in January 2015, is an intensive campaign of photography by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager or "LORRI." This will help mission controllers pinpoint Pluto's location, which is uncertain by a few thousand kilometers.

"LORRI will photograph the planet against known background star fields," explains Stern. "We'll use the images to refine Pluto's distance from the spacecraft, and then fire the engines to make any necessary corrections."

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-countdown-pluto.html

[longship]

1. Over 41,000 mph.

That thing is booking. Too bad it won't be orbiting Pluto. It's going just slide on by, out into the Kuiper belt, then eventually into the Oort Cloud.

R&K

[defacto7]

2. I had read

one difficulty it may face is the possibility of a relatively dense ice field surrounding it which I would surmise could be one of the reasons it can't be resolved fine enough to pinpoint it's location. That would be another good reason for the LORRI as it would get as much data as possible before it gets close enough to encounter any objects in the "possible" ice field. In any case we are going to get some fantastic images and data.

[Laelth]

3. Nifty. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[jakeXT]

4. one year left

[Warren DeMontague]

5. That's gonna be like the coolest 6 hours or so, when it whizzes by.

Can't wait to see those pics.

[lastlib]

6. History in the making!

I may be "sick" from work that day............ Can't miss!

Still vividly remember getting up in the middle of the night to see Voyager's first pictures of Uranus and Neptune. A great thrill to see for the first time what had never been seen before, and will not be seen again probably in our lifetimes.

[Kablooie]

7. 2006? That poor spacecraft thinks Pluto is still a planet.

Boy won't it be surprised when it arrives and find that Pluto's just a dwarf planet.
Hee hee hee.

[lastlib]

8. Surely NASA has given it the news by now.....

...but I hope the shock doesn't over-volt the cameras--I want to see those pics!