{"id":16194,"date":"2015-07-13T22:13:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T14:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/clear-sailing-expected-for-pluto-flyby\/"},"modified":"2015-07-13T22:13:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T14:13:42","slug":"clear-sailing-expected-for-pluto-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/clear-sailing-expected-for-pluto-flyby\/","title":{"rendered":"Clear sailing expected for Pluto flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qwy60v3vII8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There is&nbsp;no sign of an undiscovered moon lurking around Pluto in data streaming back to Earth from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, and that is surprising to Alan Stern, the scientist in charge of the probe.<\/p>\n<p>Stern told reporters Sunday his biggest surprise from New Horizons\u2019 first glances at Pluto is the lack of more moons beyond the five satellites already spotted from Earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m really bowled over&nbsp;that we have not found any more satellites in the system, and we may yet,\u201d said Stern, a planetary scientist from the Southwest Research Institute. \u201cWe may even find rings because our most sensitive search for rings comes after closest approach looking back towards the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have found five moons of Pluto since the icy dwarf\u2019s discovery by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.<\/p>\n<p>James Christy, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, noticed &nbsp;an elongated shape in highly magnified images of Pluto in 1978, a signature that turned out to be the dwarf planet\u2019s Texas-sized moon Charon, which Christy named for his wife and a ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology.<\/p>\n<p>New Horizons scientists analyzing images from the Hubble Space Telescope noted two more moons \u2014 Nix and Hydra \u2014 in 2005. Each of those objects is predicted to be oblong and around 35 miles (56 kilometers) across along its longest axis.<\/p>\n<p>Pluto\u2019s two smallest known moons \u2014 Kerberos and Styx \u2014 were discovered by Hubble in 2011 and 2012, respectively.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7610\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7610\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7610\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sk_still.jpg\" alt=\"New Horizons resolved all five of Pluto's five known moons in April, and has discovered no new satellites. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI\" width=\"620\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sk_still.jpg 1125w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sk_still-300x120.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sk_still-768x307.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sk_still-1024x410.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7610\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">New Horizons resolved all five of Pluto\u2019s five known moons in April, and has discovered no new satellites. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think many people on the science team expected to find exactly zero after we kept finding them from the Earth \u2014 that basically we got them all,\u201d Stern said. \u201cThere are places to put those satellites. There are plenty of stable orbits. There are even stable orbits that would not create signatures on the known satellites in terms of the orbital eccentricities and inclinations, and yet we don\u2019t find anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>New Horizons\u2019 Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, a 8.2-inch (20.8-centimeter) telescopic camera, has surveyed Pluto and its surroundings for weeks in hopes of finding new moons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re looking much deeper,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing 15 or 20 times fainter than we could from the Earth, and we don\u2019t see a thing. That\u2019s my biggest surprise so far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A thorough scouting of the path New Horizons will take by Pluto also shows no obvious signs of any debris that could threaten the high-speed space probe, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>New Horizons will blast through the Pluto system at a relative speed of nearly 31,000 mph.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe combination of the high speed of the New Horizons spacecraft and the exploration nature of this mission could bite us,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken what we think is a measured risk. We\u2019ve search for debris that may be in the system on approach. We\u2019ve used our best instruments, and found nothing of concern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFormally, we\u2019re able to set model limits of around 1-in-10,000 that the spacecraft could be lost due to a debris strike. We\u2019ve also been very honest that we\u2019re flying into the unknown. This is the risk we take with exploration, and New Horizons will be out of touch around those hours around closest approach,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n<p>A small pebble or dust grain hitting New Horizons at such tremendous speeds could be fatal to the spacecraft, which is armored to withstand the tiniest of particles but not all potential hazards.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7611\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7611\" style=\"width: 621px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7611\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/traj.png\" alt=\"A diagram of New Horizons' trajectory through the Pluto system. Times are in Eastern Daylight Time. Credit: NASA TV\/Spaceflight Now\" width=\"621\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/traj.png 1000w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/traj-300x170.png 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/traj-768x434.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7611\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A diagram of New Horizons\u2019 trajectory through the Pluto system. Times are in Eastern Daylight Time. Credit: NASA TV\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>New Horizons is set to be closest to Pluto around 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT) on Tuesday, but the probe\u2019s attention will be on Pluto and its moons. The spacecraft carries a fixed antenna, so it can collect science observations or radio its status to Earth, but not both simultaneously.<\/p>\n<p>Preferring science data, mission managers elected to keep New Horizons out of contact with ground controllers for nearly 22 hours. The final opportunity to get data from the spacecraft Monday is expected at 11:17 p.m. EDT (0317 GMT Tuesday), when New Horizons will beam back a final image of Pluto before the flyby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe get the last full-frame with LORRI,\u201d said Hal Weaver, New Horizons\u2019 project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. \u201cWe\u2019ll get about 600 pixels across of Pluto, and we\u2019ll see that early Tuesday morning. That\u2019s going to be spectacular, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then New Horizons gets to work and will not connect with engineers on the ground again until approximately 8:53 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0053 GMT Wednesday), when the craft will send back basic telemetry to tell officials it survived the encounter.<\/p>\n<p>Science data, including the highest-resolution images from the flyby, will start streaming back to Earth on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile I don\u2019t lose sleep over this, the fact is tomorrow evening is going be a little bit of drama,\u201d Stern said Monday. \u201cWe want to hear the spacecraft check back in. We want to look at the telemetry that\u2019s coming back down, and want to make sure that the spacecraft hasn\u2019t suffered any alarms, and until we pass that point tomorrow evening, we won\u2019t really know, with certainty, that we cleared the system and there were no debris strikes, but I want to emphasize I\u2019m not really worried about that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is&nbsp;no sign of an undiscovered moon lurking around Pluto in data streaming back to Earth from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, and that is surprising to Alan Stern, the scientist in charge of the probe. Stern told reporters Sunday his biggest surprise from New Horizons\u2019 first glances at Pluto is the lack of more moons [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2884,4003,2174,2848],"class_list":["post-16194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alan-stern","tag-hal-weaver","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}