New Horizons probe starts getting ready for Pluto encounter in July

[Jodell88]

The American space agency's (Nasa) mission to Pluto is about to get under way in earnest.

Its New Horizons probe will take the first of a set of critical pictures on approach to the icy world on Sunday.

At a separation still of 200 million km, Pluto will be hardly discernable in these images - just a speck of light against the stars.

But the mission team says this view is needed to help line up the spacecraft correctly for its flyby on 14 July.

"Optical navigation is one of those techniques where we image Pluto repetitively on approach to determine the position of the spacecraft relative to Pluto," explained Mark Holdridge, from the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Baltimore.

"We then perform a number of correction manoeuvres to realign our trajectory with the reference trajectory, thus ensuring we hit our aim point to travel through the Pluto system."

Any initial correction is likely to be made in March.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30954673

Come July we'll finally get a good look at Pluto. :awe:

 

[UglyCasanova]

The Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres as well. This is an exciting year for dwarf planets. 🙂

 

[Jeff7]

The Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres as well. This is an exciting year for dwarf planets. 🙂

And some people still whine about the "demotion." Geeeez.
It's getting a probe largely dedicated to studying it, despite being a few billion miles away and being smaller than Earth's moon.





I really hope it all goes well, though I do love the fact that the primary encounter is going to be done entirely by the probe, without any direct remote control.

It's a tiny planet, hours away by radio, and NH is going to whip by it at a ridiculous speed. Quick, see all you can see, cause there's no second chance!



It's too bad they can't get closer.

Cassini at Saturn has buzzed Iapetus pretty close - 2400 miles here, and ~1200 miles here. They've done <800 miles above Titan, and it's the one with the thick atmosphere - the one that's thick enough that you could strap on wings, flap your arms, and fly.
It also has the luxury of being in orbit, and of being in a very well-cataloged planetary system.





Edit: Oh, fun. The NY Times has a page called "Kepler's Tally."
(Open cautiously, the page has a lot of animations. It pegged one core of my 2.6GHz i5 CPU to 100%.)
It's a graphic of the planetary systems that Kepler has found. It seems that planetary systems are the norm, and not the exception. If a star forms from a dusty gas cloud, you're probably going to have leftovers.