Well, I'm glad that they're doing it. [cue Star Trek music]

(07-16-2015 07:39 AM)QuestionSocratic Wrote:  Tang.

I remember Tang!

good one!

(07-15-2015 04:28 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  God sure has a sense of humor:

NASA releases new data, pictures from Pluto flyby
By Stephen Feller | July 17, 2015 at 3:27 PM


This annotated view of a portion of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, named for Earth’s first artificial satellite, shows an array of enigmatic features. The surface appears to be divided into irregularly shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs, some of which contain darker materials. Features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits are also visible. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles. Features as small as a half-mile across are visible. The blocky appearance of some features is due to compression of the image. Photo courtesy of NASA

WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- NASA researchers have "maybe" 2 percent of the data and images the New Horizons probe gathered about Pluto during its 22-hour trip past the distant planet.

Officials at the space agency excitedly released the second round of data downloaded from New Horizons, which was characterized by closer pictures and animations of the planet than have been shown yet, and theories on the makeup and movement of Pluto's atmosphere.

"I think the solar system saved the best for last," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo., said at a press conference Friday to release more data and "beautiful eye candy" collected near the planet.

Now more than 2 million miles past Pluto, New Horizons has about 2 percent, or less than a gigabyte, of the 50 gigabytes of information it has collected. The expectation is that about 5 percent will have been sent back to Earth over the next week. NASA has scheduled a press conference for July 24 to announce the next round of pictures and information that will be released.

Pictures already sent back have shown frozen, craterless, icy plains on the planet, as well as mountains that rise as high over Pluto's surface as the Rocky Mountains are over Earth.

The plains of the Tombaugh Regio, formerly referred to as the "heart feature," are now believed to be carbon monoxide rich, and also somewhat more recent than some other parts of the planet based on the smoothness of the topography in the region.

"Let's remind ourselves that some surfaces of Pluto are marked with craters indicating its age," said Jeffrey Moore, New Horizons co-investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "All of this indicates that Pluto has experienced a long geographic history."

Based on the pictures sent so far, Moore said that fractures in Pluto's crust and the existence of mountainous regions means some kind of tectonics or "mountain building forces" must exist there. Additionally, he said that erosion processes appear to be functioning on the planet, based on some of what can be seen in photos.

Other areas showed mysterious pock marks and features that Moore briefly mused about the potentials of before stopping himself short. "We are in the most preliminary stages of our investigations. Jumping to conclusions comes at great peril," he said.

This second bit of data from New Horizons also is significant because researchers have been able to start informing theories that have long been held about Pluto's atmosphere, which appears to be nitrogren-based.

"We've had to wait until we were past Pluto and looking at the sun to get our best data," said Randy Gladstone, New Horizons co-investigator at SwRI in San Antonio. "We're looking forward to getting full data in a month or so."

What they know already is that nitrogen is evaporating off the surface of the planet and escaping into the atmosphere because the gravity there is much weaker than on Earth or Mars, according to Fran Bagenal, a New Horizons co-investigator at the University of Colorado. As the nitrogen enters Pluto's atmosphere, it is being picked up by solar winds.

The escaping nitrogen is ionized as it leaves the planet and is hit by the solar winds, which has created a tail of atmosphere behind the planet. "We have actually flown through this," Bagenal said, "The data we get next month will allow us to quantify the amount of that escaping atmosphere."

Over the next several months, the researchers said they will begin to get composition maps, thermal maps, and topographical maps that will allow them to learn much more about planet.

NASA News Conference on the New Horizons Mission posted July 17, 2015

New Horizons Captures Two of Pluto's Smaller Moons
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Last Updated: July 23, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert
July 21, 2015


Pluto’s moon Nix (left), shown here in enhanced color as imaged by the New Horizons Ralph instrument, has a reddish spot that has attracted the interest of mission scientists. The data were obtained on the morning of July 14, 2015, and received on the ground on July 18. At the time the observations were taken New Horizons was about 102,000 miles (165,000 km) from Nix. The image shows features as small as approximately 2 miles (3 kilometers) across on Nix, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.

Pluto’s small, irregularly shaped moon Hydra (right) is revealed in this black and white image taken from New Horizons’ LORRI instrument on July 14, 2015, from a distance of about 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers). Features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) are visible on Hydra, which measures 34 miles (55 kilometers) in length.

While Pluto’s largest moon Charon has grabbed most of the lunar spotlight so far, these two smaller and lesser-known satellites are now getting some attention. Nix and Hydra – the second and third moons to be discovered – are approximately the same size, but their similarity ends there.

New Horizons’ first color image of Pluto’s moon Nix, in which colors have been enhanced, reveals an intriguing region on the jelly bean-shaped satellite, which is estimated to be 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.

Although the overall surface color of Nix is neutral grey in the image, the newfound region has a distinct red tint. Hints of a bull’s-eye pattern lead scientists to speculate that the reddish region is a crater. “Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings,” said mission scientist Carly Howett, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. She added, “This observation is so tantalizing, I’m finding it hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked.”

Meanwhile, the sharpest image yet received from New Horizons of Pluto’s satellite Hydra shows that its irregular shape resembles the state of Michigan. The new image was made by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 143,000 miles (231,000 kilometers), and shows features as small as 0.7 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. There appear to be at least two large craters, one of which is mostly in shadow. The upper portion looks darker than the rest of Hydra, suggesting a possible difference in surface composition. From this image, mission scientists have estimated that Hydra is 34 miles (55 kilometers) long and 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide. Commented mission science collaborator Ted Stryk of Roane State Community College in Tennessee, “Before last week, Hydra was just a faint point of light, so it's a surreal experience to see it become an actual place, as we see its shape and spot recognizable features on its surface for the first time.”

Images of Pluto’s most recently discovered moons, Styx and Kerberos, are expected to be transmitted to Earth no later than mid-October.

Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005 using Hubble Space Telescope data by a research team led by New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. New Horizons’ findings on the surface characteristics and other properties of Nix and Hydra will help scientists understand the origins and subsequent history of Pluto and its moons.

Views of Pluto Through the Years
July 15, 2015

This animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.

NASA releases gorgeous image of Saturn's moon Dione


blogger-avatar by Amber Bouman | @dameright | Wed., Aug 19, 2015

NASA today released a new image of Dione, one of Saturn's many moons, as the spacecraft responsible for the shots moved into the next phases of its assignment. The visible light photograph displays the many craters and ice cliffs on Dione's surface. The Cassini spacecraft, named for the Italian astronomer who discovered Dione in 1684, has been touring Saturn and its many moons for the last 11 years and has already produced dozens of stunning pictures. Most recently, it completed five flybys of Dione, with the fifth at only 295 miles --the closest distance of the bunch.

This final pass is of particular interest to NASA scientists, who hope that the images of Dione's north pole will be able to confirm geological activity. The third-densest of Saturn's 62 moons, Dione is composed primarily of water ice; scientists have seen hints of "active geologic processes" on the moon including a transient atmosphere and evidence of ice volcanoes. Next up, Cassini will begin year-long preparations for its final project which involve it diving repeatedly through the space between Saturn and its rings.

Experience New Horizons' Pluto flyby in action-packed video

A space-graphics artist takes New Horizons' collection of Pluto still images and turns them into a sweeping animated video that zips through space.





Space fans got the thrill of the year by following NASA's extensive coverage of the New Horizons mission flyby of dwarf-planet Pluto, an epic journey over nine years in the making that saw the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14.

We pored over increasingly clearer pictures showing Pluto's heart, odd dark spots and moons. It was a story told in still images.

Now, space fan and graphics whiz Björn Jónsson has taken NASA's collection of flyby photos and strung them together into a video animation that gives a thrilling spacecraft's-eye view of the approach and pass of Pluto.

This is more than just a series of images put together like a flip book. Jónsson put some artistic thought into the work along with some educated guesses about how a video would look from New Horizons' view if the probe had the capability to film its flyby.

Jónsson offers an explanation of what we see in the video, which posted August 13: "Pluto's atmosphere is included and should be fairly realistic from about 10 seconds into the animation and to the end. Earlier [in the video] it is largely just guesswork that can be improved in the future once all data has been downlinked from the spacecraft. Light from Pluto's satellite Charon illuminates Pluto's night side but is exaggerated here, in reality it would be only barely visible or not visible at all."

Crank up the video to full screen, dim the lights and enjoy the sensation of a close encounter with another world. It's dramatic and immediate, and it takes only 16 seconds to lend a new perspective to a mission that many of us followed so closely.

NASA scientists finally seeing Pluto like never before
6:25 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015 | Filed in: Nation


This July 14, 2015, photo provided by NASA shows a synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA�s New Horizons spacecraft. The new close-up images of Pluto reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP)

NASA scientists are seeing Pluto like they never have before.

New images from the New Horizons Spacecraft show "a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

The new images show the small planet's surface at a resolution of 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel roughly 1,100 miles away, according to NASA. They reveal a wide variety of dunes, ice and valleys throughout the surface, which "is every bit as complex as that of Mars,” said Jeff Moore, the leader of NASA's New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team.

Forthcoming images will reveal more about Pluti's moons, the report said.

Scientists were surprised to learn more about the complexity of layers in Pluto's atmospheric haze as well.

Read more here.


This July 14, 2015, photo provided by NASA shows a 220-mile (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto taken from NASA�s New Horizons spacecraft. The new close-up images of Pluto reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP)

New Pluto pictures astonish scientists -- again
By William Harwood CBS News September 24, 2015, 5:49 PM


This near-full image of Pluto provides the best global view yet obtained, a mosaic of images beamed back from the New Horizon's probe during its July flyby of the dwarf planet. NASA

Of the spectacular new images sent back of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons July 14 flyby of the icy dwarf planet, perhaps most stunning is a color mosaic made up of the high-resolution images transmitted back to date.

It shows a nearly full globe, allowing viewers to zoom in on features across the surface, from dark, cratered terrains and ice mountains to the smooth, frozen plains marking the now-familiar "heart" of Pluto, dubbed Sputnik Planum, to the strangely ridged terrain that so far defies explanation.

"It's a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles," William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead, said in a NASA release describing the ridged terrain.

"It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology," he said. "This'll really take time to figure out. Maybe it's some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto's faint sunlight."

A new high-resolution view reveals unusual linear ridges stretching across hundreds of miles, along with deep canyons and smooth plains blanketed by sharp shadows from the strange-looking ridges:


In a scene measuring 330 miles across, strange linear ridges can be seen on Pluto's surface, along with a deep canyon and isolated plains. NASA

Another picture, the highest-resolution image yet returned by New Horizons, shows dune-like structures in what a NASA description said appears to be a "shrinking glacial ice lake" along with nearby "fractured, angular water ice mountains with sheer cliffs."

The near-global map, in cylindrical projection, is not yet complete, but it adds another powerful tool for scientists to begin understanding the structure and evolution of Pluto's intriguing surface. An equally stunning, zoomable nearly-full globe view shows the planet as it might appear to an astronaut on final approach.

"Pluto's surface colors were enhanced in this (cylindrical projection) view to reveal subtle details in a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges and deep reds," said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead. "Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a wonderfully complex geological and climatological story that we have only just begun to decode."


A high-resolution closeup showing the smooth plain of Sputnik Planum butting up against more mountainous terrain. The dune-like ripples are not yet explained. NASA

Along with the new pictures, the New Horizons team provided a map showing the distribution of methane ice across the part of Pluto's surface that has been seen to date. Sputnik Planum, a bright, smooth plain, shows relatively high concentrations as do brighter crater rims and ridges. No methane shows up inside deep craters or across the dwarf planet's darker regions.

Scientists do not yet know whether the methane somehow favors the brighter areas or if the ice makes the regions bright to begin with.

"It's like the classic chicken-or-egg problem," Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team lead, said in the NASA release. "We're unsure why this is so, but the cool thing is that New Horizons has the ability to make exquisite compositional maps across the surface of Pluto, and that'll be crucial to resolving how enigmatic Pluto works."


A zoomed-in portion of a new global mosaic showing the full range of Pluto's intriguing terrain, from dark mountainous, heavily cratered zones to the smooth, frozen plains of Sputnik Planum to strangely ridged features that defy easy explanation. NASA

Said Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator: "I wish Pluto's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh had lived to see this day."

New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14 and as of Thursday was 72 days and more than 53 million miles beyond the dwarf planet.

Because of the vast distances involved -- more than 3 billion miles -- the size of the spacecraft's antenna and the power of its transmitters, it will take more than a year and a half for New Horizons to beam back all of its stored imagery and data. The science team is releasing selected photos every week or so as new images come in.

Gallery of 38 more new pictures here

About William Harwood:

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 125 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."

BREATHTAKING

New Horizons Sends Back Stunning Image of Pluto's Moon Charon

By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
October 2, 2015 4:40 PM
Good Morning America


New Horizons Sends Back Stunning Image of Pluto's Moon Charon (ABC News)

The cracks, bruises and colorful spots on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are captured in stunning new detail in photos sent back to Earth by NASA's New Horizons probe.

The high-resolution images of Charon show the complex terrain covered in mountains and craters. A canyon system stretching 1,000 miles across the face of Charon is four times as long as the Grand Canyon and twice as deep in places, indicating a violent tectonic history.

"We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low," Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team said in a statement, adding the team "couldn't be more delighted with what we see."

Plains south of the canyon are noticeably younger than the large cratered regions to the north, indicating signs of wide-scale resurfacing on Charon, according to NASA researchers.

The photos are the latest to be released as New Horizons continues to send a trove of data and photos from its July 14 flyby back to Earth. With data downlinking at a rate of about 1 to 4 kilobits per second, it's expected the entire trove of science will take one year to be transmitted back to Earth.

Launched in January 2006 on a 3-billion-mile journey to Pluto, New Horizons "phoned home" after its Pluto flyby, indicating that it had successfully navigated just 7,700 miles from the dwarf planet. It later sent back the first high-resolution images of Pluto's surface.

New Horizons conserved energy by taking "naps" during the monumental trip. The spacecraft, equipped with a battery that converts radiation from decaying plutonium into electricity, may have enough power for two more decades of exploration, according to NASA.

The piano-sized probe is speeding through the Kuiper Belt, an area at the edge of the solar system encompassing Pluto and a vast area of tiny, icy worlds. After the intensive data transmission process, NASA is considering another flyby of a Kuiper belt object known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

New Horizons loses about a few watts of power each year, according to NASA, but is estimated to have as much as 20 years left in its life expectancy.

Surprise! Pluto Has Blue Skies (Photo)
SPACE.com By Mike Wall
October 8, 2015 4:44 PM


Pluto’s haze layer displays a blue color in this image obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Image released Oct. 8, 2015.

The more scientists learn about Pluto, the more interesting the dwarf planet gets.

During its historic flyby of Pluto this past July, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered towering ice mountains and vast glaciers on the frigid body. And now, flyby images recently beamed home by New Horizons reveal that the faraway dwarf planet has blue skies similar to those of Earth.

"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt?" New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement today (Oct. 8). The Kuiper Belt is the ring of icy bodies that lies beyond Neptune's orbit. "It's glorious." [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

The newly received image is the mission's first color photo of Pluto's atmosphere, team members said. (New Horizons sent home atmosphere photos shortly after the July 14 close approach, but they were all in black and white.)

The blue color comes from complex organic molecules in Pluto's atmosphere called tholins, which are themselves probably gray or red but scatter light in blue wavelengths, New Horizons team members said. The same basic phenomenon explains why Earth's sky is blue.

"That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles," mission team member Carly Howett, also of SwRI, said in the same statement. "A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules."
View gallery
Surprise! Pluto Has Blue Skies (Photo)
Regions on Pluto having exposed water ice appear in blue in this composite image from New Horizons s …

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks apart nitrogen and methane high up in Pluto's tenuous but extended atmosphere, allowing tholins and other complicated molecules to form, researchers said. The tholins eventually drift down to Pluto's surface, which explains why the dwarf planet sports a reddish-brown hue.

These tholins typically settle onto ices composed of nitrogen and other exotic substances (exotic to those with Earth-based sensibilities, at least). But some regions of exposed water-ice do exist on Pluto's surface, newly received New Horizons data reveals.

Mission scientists said they aren't sure why the water ice crops up where it does — generally, in some of the reddest areas on Pluto.

"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," said science team member Silvia Protopapa, of the University of Maryland. "We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."

New Horizons sent back a small portion of its flyby data shortly after the epic encounter but stored most of this treasure trove on board for later transmission. The spacecraft began beaming the entire data set back to mission control last month; all of it should be on the ground by the end of 2016, team members have said.

New Horizons is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth and in good health. The mission team aims to perform a flyby of a second, much smaller Kuiper Belt object in early 2019 if NASA approves and funds an extended mission for the spacecraft.

Get those funds, baby! Exploration is where our species shines, and what we see now is only a prelude to something bigger. I'd love to see that something bigger in my lifetime. Space away, lads!

'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' Collide on Pluto Moon Charon
Aug 4, 2015 03:15 PM ET // by Mike Wall, Space.com


Image showing the provisional names being used by the New Horizons team for features on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. These monikers have not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" universes are coming together on Pluto's big moon Charon.
Play Video
Why Did We Send a Probe to Pluto?
NASA’s New Horizons has almost arrived to Pluto! What do we know about this dwarf planet, and what do we hope to learn from sending a probe to the surface?

The team behind NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which performed the first-ever Pluto flyby last month, has unofficially named some Charon craters after characters from both beloved sci-fi franchises.

PHOTOS: NASA’s Mission to Pluto by the Numbers

For example, newly released maps created by the New Horizons crew reveal that Charon now has a Vader Crater, as well as impact features named after fellow "Star Wars" principals Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. And James T. Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" series, gets his own crater, as do his shipmates Mr. Spock, Sulu and Uhura. [See more photos of Pluto and its moons]

New Horizons' flyby revealed both Pluto and Charon to be complex worlds with diverse surfaces, so there are a lot of new features to name. Most of the newly announced Charon monikers are drawn from the science fiction canon; famed sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke and Octavia Butler get their own craters, for instance, and chasms on the 750-mile-wide (1,200 kilometers) moon are named after fictional spaceships, such as Nostromo from the 1979 film "Alien."

The Pluto appellations, by contrast, are generally more grounded in reality, featuring real-life explorers (though two large, dark features on the dwarf planet are named after the Balrog, a type of monster in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and Cthulhu, a god created by writer H.P. Lovecraft, respectively).

ANALYSIS: New Horizons is Seeing Signs of Kuiper Belt 'Blood Spatter'

For instance, Pluto's famous "heart" is named after Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930. Other parts of Pluto are named after pioneering space missions, including NASA's Viking, Pioneer and Voyager efforts; the Soviet Union's Venus-studying Venera program; and Hayabusa, a Japanese mission that returned pieces of an asteroid to Earth in 2010.

The large, icy plain within Tombaugh Regio ("Tombaugh Region") is called Sputnik Planum, after the famous Soviet satellite whose 1957 launch marked the birth of the space age. Other parts of the heart are named after the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, which were lost in 1986 and 2003, respectively, resulting in the death of 14 astronauts.

The New Horizons team is not just recognizing space exploration, either. Famed French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau's name now graces a Pluto cliff, and the dwarf planet's two known mountain ranges are named after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who, in 1953, became the first people ever to summit Mount Everest, Earth's tallest mountain.

The New Horizons team selected all of these monikers with help from the public — specifically, the "Our Pluto" campaign, a joint project involving NASA, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California.

People around the world suggested tens of thousands of names via the Our Pluto project during its March-April run, New Horizons team members have said.

ANALYSIS: Pluto and Charon Dazzle in New Horizons Portrait

The New Horizons team chose its favorites from this large database and submitted them to the IAU, which assigns "official" names to celestial bodies and their features. Vader Crater, Sputnik Planum, Nostromo Chasma and all the other appellations remain provisional until the IAU has approved them. (The IAU, of course, famously reclassified Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" back in 2006.)

New Horizons team members have come up with a scheme to name features on Pluto, Charon and the dwarf planet's four tiny moons (which are called Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx).

The names of Pluto's surface features are divided into six themes: space missions and spacecraft, scientists and engineers, historic explorers, underworld beings, underworlds and underworld locales, and travelers to the underworld.

Charon's craters, mountains and canyons are being named according to four themes: fictional explorers and travelers; fictional origins and destinations; fictional vessels; and exploration authors, artists and directors.

Each of the four small moons has one associated theme: deities of the night (Nix), legendary serpents and dragons (Hydra), dogs from history, literature and mythology (Kerberos) and river gods (Styx).

The maps that host all of these names will continue to come together over the next year or so. It will likely take New Horizons about 15 more months to beam its complete set of flyby images and observations back to Earth, mission officials have said.

You can learn more about the Our Pluto campaign and read more of the New Horizons team's chosen names here: http://www.ourpluto.org/pluto

Pluto's Spinning Moons
Most inner moons in the solar system keep one face pointed toward their central planet; this animation shows that certainly isn’t the case with the small moons of Pluto, which behave like spinning tops. Pluto is shown at center with, in order, from smaller to wider orbit: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Mark Showalter

(01-02-2016 11:52 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  



Pluto's Spinning Moons
Most inner moons in the solar system keep one face pointed toward their central planet; this animation shows that certainly isn’t the case with the small moons of Pluto, which behave like spinning tops. Pluto is shown at center with, in order, from smaller to wider orbit: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Mark Showalter

It is like a cosmic dance party.

(01-02-2016 11:00 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  It is like a cosmic dance party.

still going and going and going...

Quote:“New Horizons has long been a mission of firsts — first to explore Pluto, first to explore the Kuiper Belt, fastest spacecraft ever launched,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “And now, we’ve been able to make images farther from Earth than any spacecraft in history.”

The New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and is currently in hibernation. Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will bring the spacecraft out of its electronic slumber on June 4 and begin a series of system checkouts and other activities to prepare New Horizons for the MU69 encounter.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizon...uiper-belt