Pluto To Come Into Focus In Two Weeks

Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows.

Solid methane was originally detected on Pluto in 1976 by a group of Earth-based astronomers led by Dr Dale Cruikshank of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who is now a member of the New Horizons team. For the last seven weeks, the New Horizons hazard analysis team has used the spacecraft’s telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera to scan for dangers in the probe’s path, including additional tiny moons, rings, or dust. However the flyby is so fast, and such a precious opportunity, that the spacecraft will focus entirely on Pluto during the July 14 encounter, at the cost of leaving the scientists and engineers back home in suspense.

“Pluto’s atmosphere is alive and well, and has not frozen out on the surface”, noted New Horizons deputy project scientist Leslie Young. Without them, much of the science of the Pluto flyby would be lost. At the rate of speed that New Horizons is traveling, a collision with something even the size of a grain of rice could be devastating. It bumped the spacecraft’s velocity by just 27 centimeters per second-about one-half mile per hour-slightly adjusting its arrival time and position at a flyby close-approach target point approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

“We don’t know what the spots are, and we can’t wait to find out”, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said in a statement. We haven’t done anything like this since Voyager in the 1980s, and nothing like it is planned to ever happen again – a first exploration of a new planet – by any space agency on Earth. Scientists say that this gas is primordial on Pluto, which means that it was produced by the solar nebula which formed the solar system billions of years ago.

In the annotated version, below, Pluto’s prime meridian (the region of the planet that faces Charon) is shown in yellow and the equator is shown in pink.

New Horizons spacecraft is sending back tantalizing images of bright and dark areas on Pluto’s surface.

With all the speculation, everyone is eagerly awaiting July 14 for whatever images and secrets the New Horizons mission may divulge about Pluto, which is still our favorite (dwarf) planet.

New Horizons had started its journey on January 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket. “And every day is bringing new features into light”.