close to Pluto is staged on the site of the NASA TV
This website dedicated to New Horizons and its incredible space adventure.
The historic appointment with the last planet of the Solar System was carried out through a flyby of about 12,000 km.
The NASA probe was left in 2006, just months before the declassification of Pluto to dwarf planet. But his trip does not stop there. The eplorazione continue with new fly-by of other bodies of the mysterious Kuiper Belt.
However, the evidence that everything was for the better will be the “call” that the probe should make around 3 tomorrow night. Only then you will know what happened to New Horizons and if it is able to continue its fascinating mission beyond the boundaries of the Solar System.
DATA
Pluto is the last object in the solar system still unexplored. The last outpost unknown and mysterious. Him know only the canonical elements. To make a complete circle around our star, for example, it employs almost 250 of our years.
Currently its distance from Earth is about 4,500 million kilometers, but in 140 years will acora farther. It is a body, or rather a block of ice, cold and inhospitable surface with average temperatures that reach 223 degrees less. Until a few years ago he was considered a planet in effect, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Union has demoted to dwarf planet. Pluto, however, is now demanding a ransom, nano or nano, wants revenge and this July the big news in store.
NEW MEASURES
To make the measures of the small, but distantissimo Plutonian system, we thought Lorri (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager). The instrument on the spacecraft has calculated with almost absolute certainty that the diameter of Pluto is about 2370 km, while that of Charon is only 1,208. Other dimensions, of course downward, to Nix and Hydra, the other two of the five known satellites, which are respectively 35 and 45 kilometers. No estimate, finally, for Kerberos and Styx, much smaller than the other three.
THE THIRD AREA
After decades, finally, humanity has crowned the long cherished dream: the conquest of all the planets of the Solar System. Appeal lacked only he, the lord of the underworld. Despite himself, Pluto, has two characteristics: it is the ultimate but also the first of a large population of objects of so-called third zone, the Kuiper Belt, an area on the edge of the Solar System in which lie hundreds of bodies of ice beyond the orbit of Neptune.
The first to assume its existence was the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper which in 1951 suggested the birth of comets just from this very remote area.
THE EXPLORATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
New Horizons has embarked on her own journey nine years ago, in January 2006 (a few months before the declassification of a planetoid Pluto) and now stands at more than 5 billion kilometers from its home base. In his long journey in stages, the NASA probe, traveling at a speed of 50,000 km / h, has revealed the features of the planetoid and confirmed some certainties. “We have found new moons or rings like those of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. For many of us scientists was a surprise scientific – said Alan Stern, principal investigator of the mission of the day was the correct rotta-. Therefore, do not need any adjustment path to avoid potential dangers. “
FIVE MOONS
Pluto is not the lone body on the edge of the solar system, has five known satellites: Charon, Styx, Night, Cerberus and Hydra. The first, Charon, is half the size of the planetoid, is another so-called dwarf planet and goes in the same category of Ceres and Xena, large asteroids promoted to a higher rank.
As New Horizons approached him, Pluto and its area have become even more defined. And in these next few hours we will have the best image. New photos sent to earth show two quite different faces. A presents some singular dark spots, a diameter of about 500 kilometers distributed along the equatorial line.
The planet was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, February 18, 1930, by Clyde Tombaugh and christened in honor of Pluto, the god of the underworld in Roman mythology; the first letters of the name, PL, are also the initials of the astronomer Percival Lowell, who first postulated the existence in 1915.
THE METHANE
“And finally you can also see its colors. Like Mars, but for different reasons, it is red, pinkish – said Simon Porter NASA – the colors and the features of its varied terrain are being defined in the images. Even now we can say that Pluto is unlike any other body in the solar system. “
Meanwhile discoveries of New Horizons multiply. The last in order of time the presence of methane. “A mixture primordial – scientists have speculated – content in the cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.”
A decades by his remark, finally, part of the ashes its discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, who are on the spacecraft, reached and outdated, the most distant object in the solar system.
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Tuesday, July 14, 2015, 11:47 – Last Updated: 21:42
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