New Horizons NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
March 14, 2023 NASA’s New Horizons Team Discusses Discoveries from the Kuiper Belt
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March 18, 2019 Revealing the First Primordial Planetesimal
January 3, 2019 The Ultima Thule Flyby
January 2, 2019 First Results
January 1, 2019 Spacecraft status, latest images and data download schedule
December 31, 2018 New Horizons Spacecraft Homing in on Kuiper Belt Target
October 24, 2018 New Horizons Team Previews Ultima Thule Flyby American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting
December 12, 2017 New Horizons Explores the Kuiper Belt American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting
October 18, 2016 NASA's New Horizons Mission: Discoveries on Pluto and Worlds Beyond AAS Division for Planetary Sciences and European Planetary Science Congress
March 21, 2016 New Horizons: Peering into Pluto's Past Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
November 9, 2015 Science Results from the New Horizons Encounter with Pluto 47th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting
July 24, 2015 New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto
April 29, 2015 NASA's New Horizons Detects Surface Features, Possible Polar Cap on Pluto
April 14, 2015 NASA's New Horizons Nears Historic Encounter with Pluto
March 21, 2016
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
New Horizons Team Presents Latest Pluto Science Results at Planetary Conference
Members of NASA’s New Horizons mission team will present nearly 40 scientific reports on the Pluto system this week during the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference near Houston. The scientists will discuss results included in the March 18 issue of the journal Science, as well as results gathered from analyses of new data since the Science papers were submitted.
“The New Horizons team has been inundated with high-quality data beaming back from our spacecraft, now out in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “The findings we report this week at LPSC cover every aspect of the Pluto system, from its surface and atmosphere, to its origin and the nature and origin of its satellites. We’re excited to share these many results.”
The New Horizons team will discuss several noteworthy results with media on Monday, March 21, at noon CDT/1 p.m. EDT. The briefing will be webcast live at http://livestream.com/viewnow/LPSC2016. Presenters and topics include:
Stern will also deliver a lecture, “The Exploration of Pluto,” on Tuesday, March 22, at 7:30 p.m. CDT. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be archived online. For the full schedule of live and archived Web events, see http://livestream.com/viewnow/LPSC2016.
New Horizons team members will be available for interviews at LPSC. Contact Mike Buckley of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory at (443) 567-3145 or michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu to schedule.
New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute leads the science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.
Slide 1
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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Slide 2
New Horizons used techniques across the electromagnetic spectrum to investigate Pluto, including radio waves that the spacecraft’s radio science experiment (REX) measures. The imaging data is in the visible and near infrared range, but there are many more ways to learn about the Pluto system.
Slide 3
Radar, a radio frequency technique, – has been used to investigate the surface properties of bodies across the solar system, but never beyond Saturn – until the New Horizons mission.
Slide 4
In a bistatic radar experiment, the signal travels from a transmitter in one location, to a receiver in a separate location near the target object. In this case, the transmission came from NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna station, toward Pluto and the radio receiver on the New Horizons spacecraft.
Slide 5
This figure shows the New Horizons radio science data, with the bistatic reflectance indicated.
Slide 6
Given the difficulty of radar measurements at such long distances, and that other objects in the Kuiper Belt are smaller than Pluto, the team expects this record to hold for some time – unless New Horizons breaks it at another Kuiper Belt object. Provided NASA approves an extended mission, New Horizons could observe a KBO named MU69 on January 1, 2019.
Like Earth, Pluto has tropical zones – they’re not the warmer tropics we’re used to on Earth, but these zones do drive Pluto’s climate. Source: Alissa Earle, MIT.
An examination of Pluto’s long-term climate variations includes the finding that Pluto has both tropics and arctic regions. Source: Alissa Earle, MIT.
Pluto’s “tropical arctic” experiences both direct sunlight and prolonged periods of sunlight and darkness. Source: Richard Binzel and Alissa Earle, MIT (adapted from submission to Icarus).
Pluto is currently between two extreme climate states.
Slide 7
There is a band within Pluto’s tropics that never experiences arctic winter or arctic summer. Source: Richard Binzel and Alissa Earle, MIT (adapted from submission to Icarus).
Slide 8
Characteristics of Pluto’s various climate states; the planet is currently between two climatic extremes.
Pluto’s surface vapor pressure, over the course of an orbital year (about 250 Earth years), during different climate epochs.
Several surface features on Pluto – viewed in the informally named Sputnik Planum – may provide evidence of higher-pressure epochs. All scale bars are approximately 20 miles (30 kilometers) and images are oriented with north up. Image sources: “a” and “b” are from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) at approximately 320 meters/pixel; “c” is from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) at approximately 130 meters/pixel.
New Horizons scientists have spotted evidence of massive, recent downslope glacial flow in Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum region.
The glacial flow observed by New Horizons scientists appears to move toward the shoreline of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum; active glaciation is occurring in Pluto’s permanent tropics zone.
Pluto’s ridges and troughs indicate past glacial flow and erosion.
Evidence has long pointed to a giant collision creating Pluto’s system of moons, as opposed to the small moons being captured objects. Evidence includes the moons’ co-planar, circular orbits and their similar brightness (which is brighter than most Kuiper Belt objects).
Crater measurements help scientists estimate the “age” of a planetary body’s surface.
Crater measurements help scientists estimate the “age” of a planetary body’s surface. These images of Pluto’s smaller moons were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on the New Horizons spacecraft.