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One Month from Pluto


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One Month from Pluto: New Horizons on Track, All Clear, and Ready for Action

June 15, 2015

Now within one month of the historic Pluto flyby, NASA’s New Horizons team has executed a small but important course correction for the spacecraft, completed updated analyses of possible hazards in the Pluto system, and is picking up the pace of science-data collection.

Homing in on Pluto

A 45-second thruster burst on June 14 refined New Horizons’ trajectory toward Pluto, targeting the optimal aim point for the spacecraft’s flight through the Pluto system.

This was only the second targeting maneuver of New Horizons’ approach to Pluto; Sunday’s burst adjusted the spacecraft’s velocity by just 52 centimeters per second, aiming it toward the desired close-approach target point approximately 7,750 miles above Pluto’s surface.

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I'm really interested in this, and the closer it gets, the more eager I am for more info... I do suspect, that like all other probe missions.. This one will leave us

with more questions than answers... But that's good...

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That is great. However many new images of the planets and Pluto they can get is alright with me. I remember when one satellite launch was a huge deal. Now NASA has plenty of satellites and rovers all over the solar system. I don't think very many people understand what it takes to make this happen.

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That is great. However many new images of the planets and Pluto they can get is alright with me. I remember when one satellite launch was a huge deal. Now NASA has plenty of satellites and rovers all over the solar system. I don't think very many people understand what it takes to make this happen.

It is amazing. It drives me nuts to hear that "It's a shame to watch the USA getting eclipsed by China or India." every time those countries launch some relatively simple craft to orbit the Moon or Mars while we are in what is probably the greatest period of space exploration in US history.

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It seems a shame that they could not have made a closer pass, 7000 miles is a good way off. I'm not sure if I read that the craft is going on to a second dwarf planted after Pluto, if so that might explain the need for this particular distance to get the proper "sling-shot" trajectory. If not, why not take it in to within 200-500 miles or so above the planet for finer detail, it's not like we will be back this way any time soon?

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It seems a shame that they could not have made a closer pass, 7000 miles is a good way off. I'm not sure if I read that the craft is going on to a second dwarf planted after Pluto, if so that might explain the need for this particular distance to get the proper "sling-shot" trajectory. If not, why not take it in to within 200-500 miles or so above the planet for finer detail, it's not like we will be back this way any time soon?

NH is scheduled to slingshot away from Pluto and do a flyby of another Kuiper belt object, possibly PT1. I think the flyby vs. orbit is a function of several things:

1. It is a mission to explore the Kuiper belt as well as Pluto and Charon

2. To get to Pluto in a timely manner, NH had to get a big speed boost off of gravity assist from Jupiter in 2007. Slowing back down would take time and a lot f fuel, which the craft doesn't have but without that speed boost, NH wouldn't get to Pluto until 2036.

3. If it did slow down then NH would be stuck at Pluto rather than continuing on to explore the Kuiper belt.

4. A lot wasn't known about Pluto when NH was launched back in 2006 so I think they may have been leery of setting up an orbit without understanding the neighborhood. Kerberos was discovered well after NH launched and even now NH is looking for smaller objects orbiting Pluto that can't be seen from earth or Hubble.

Edited by Merc14
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One thing to keep in mind is the data download from NH will be an extended procedure according to this article at The Planetary society http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/03101637-pluto-image-expectations.html Within the two weeks surrounding the closest point of approach only 1% of the science data will be downlinked to earth. From the article:

It's hard to get data from Pluto

Data will arrive on Earth in a series of downlinks. Downlink sessions can last as long as about 8 hours, but are usually somewhat shorter. Whenever New Horizons is downlinking data, it can't take new photos, so the downlinks get shorter and less frequent as the spacecraft gets close to the time of the flyby, when it concentrates on collecting as much data as possible.
, there will be much less data downlinked than New Horizons has stored on board. After data is downlinked, it must be processed before posting online. How long that will take is not yet known.

On Sunday, July 12, New Horizons will transmit the last of its optical navigation data. These images will have lower resolution than the images we have already received from Dawn at Ceres. Then, on Sunday and Monday, July 12 and 13, there will be a series of four "Fail Safe" downlinks. These are designed to return a minimum set of data from all instruments, just in case New Horizons does not survive the flyby. A last downlink ending overnight Monday July 13, called "E-Health 1," will include one last pre-closest approach photo of Pluto.

Then there is a nail-biting 24-hour period of waiting while New Horizons concentrates on flyby science and does not communicate with Earth, followed by the much-anticipated beep of the "Phone Home" downlink on Tuesday night, July 14. Following closest approach, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 15 and 16, there will be a series of "First Look" downlinks containing a sampling of key science data. Another batch of data will arrive in the "Early High Priority" downlinks over the subsequent weekend, July 17-20. Then there will be a hiatus of 8 weeks before New Horizons turns to systematically downlinking all its data. Almost all image data returned during the week around closest approach will be lossily compressed -- they will show JPEG compression artifacts. Only the optical navigation images are losslessly compressed.

The transmission of the High Priority data set will be complete on July 20, and then image transmission will pause. For nearly two months, until September 14, New Horizons will switch to near-real-time downlinking of data from instruments that generate low data volumes (like SWAP and PEPSSI) while it transmits just housekeeping information for all of the rest of the data. No new images will arrive on the ground during this time.

On September 14, New Horizons will begin downlinking a "browse" version of the entire Pluto data set, in which all images will be lossily compressed. It will take about 10 weeks to get that data set to the ground. There will be compression artifacts, but we'll see the entire data set. Then, around November 16, New Horizons will begin to downlink the entire science data set losslessly compressed. It will take a year to complete that process.
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