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New Horizons: Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy
Posted by Alan Stern on 2013/08/24 09:16 CDT | 2 comments
New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!).
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/16 11:24 CDT | 4 comments
In which the fifth graders of Kipp Heartwood Academy argue the competing sides in the is-Pluto-a-planet debate through the medium of rap.
Pluto on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons: Is there an ocean, or not?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/02 08:00 CDT | 5 comments
Does Pluto have an ocean under its ice? If it doesn't now, did it ever have one? How will we know?
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/29 01:18 CDT | 4 comments
Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.
Pluto on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons: Small moons, dust, surfaces, interiors
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/24 09:04 CDT | 5 comments
My roundup from notes on the day's presentations on dust in the Pluto system and the surfaces and interiors of Pluto and Charon.
Pluto on the Eve of New Horizons: Webcast tonight
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/23 08:37 CDT | 3 comments
Remembering the Pluto Campaign: A Success Story
The Society Worked for Years to Help Launch a Mission to Pluto
Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/07/22 02:11 CDT | 3 comments
The New Horizons mission to Pluto survived many near-death encounters with cancellation during its development. The Planetary Society worked the whole time to ensure it would launch.
New names for Pluto's little moons Kerberos and Styx; and a new moon for Neptune
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/15 01:37 CDT | 4 comments
Pluto's moons, formerly known as "P4" and "P5," are now named Kerberos and Styx; I thought I'd help place them into context with a little help from Cassini. Also, Neptune now has a 14th known moon.
Great News: New Horizons to "stay the course" at Pluto
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/17 02:47 CDT
This is extremely good news: after more than a year of analysis, the New Horizons mission and NASA have concluded and agreed that New Horizons' originally-planned trajectory past Pluto is likely safe from dust.
New Horizons: Encounter Planning Accelerates
Posted by Alan Stern on 2013/05/17 10:18 CDT | 4 comments
Back in 2005 and 2006, when Pluto’s second and third moons (Nix and Hydra) were discovered, searches by astronomers for still more moons didn’t reveal any. So the accidental discovery of Pluto’s fourth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-2011 raised the possibility that the hazards in the Pluto system might be greater than previously anticipated.
Pluto's seasons and what New Horizons may find when it passes by
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/02 03:42 CDT | 5 comments
New Horizons might see a Pluto with a northern polar cap, a southern polar cap, or both caps, according to work by Leslie Young.
2011 HM₁₀₂: A new companion for Neptune
Posted by Alex Parker on 2013/04/30 04:20 CDT | 2 comments
This month my latest paper made it to print in the Astronomical Journal. It's a short piece that describes a serendipitous discovery that my collaborators and I made while searching for a distant Kuiper Belt Object for the New Horizons spacecraft to visit after its 2015 Pluto flyby.
When will New Horizons have better views of Pluto than Hubble does?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/18 04:22 CST | 7 comments
Last week, I posted an explainer on why Hubble's images of galaxies show so much more detail than its images of Pluto. Then I set you all a homework problem: when will New Horizons be able to see Pluto better than Hubble does? Here's the answer.
Why can Hubble get detailed views of distant galaxies but not of Pluto?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/14 12:37 CST | 15 comments
How come Hubble's pictures of galaxies billions of light years away are so beautifully detailed, yet the pictures of Pluto, which is so much closer, are just little blobs? I get asked this question, or variations of it, a lot. Here's an explainer.
Kuiper Belt Objects Submitted to Minor Planet Center
Posted by Alex Parker on 2013/01/25 03:30 CST | 2 comments
Recently, several of the Kuiper Belt Objects our team has discovered while searching for New Horizons post-Pluto flyby candidates have been submitted to the Minor Planet Center (the organization responsible for designating minor bodies in the solar system) and their orbital information is now in the public domain.
Alan Stern Returns to Planetary Radio
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/11/27 04:08 CST
The New Horizons Pluto mission PI provides an update, and introduces his new public project called Uwingu.
Citizen "Ice Hunters" help find a Neptune Trojan target for New Horizons
Posted by Alex Parker on 2012/10/09 12:15 CDT | 1 comments
2011 HM102 is an L5 Neptune Trojan, trailing Neptune by approximately 60 degrees. This object was discovered in the search for a New Horizons post-Pluto encounter object in the Kuiper Belt.
What's up in the Solar System in August 2012
Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/08/03 06:03 CDT
Welcome to the monthly roundup of our solar system's envoy of electronic explorers! All eyes are on Curiosity as it approaches Mars this weekend. Who will lend support at the Red Planet?
A fifth moon for Pluto, and a possible hazard for New Horizons
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/07/16 02:55 CDT | 7 comments
Pluto is now known to have at least five moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, P4, and the newly discovered P5), and its burgeoning population might pose a risk to New Horizons during its flyby, three years from now.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/09 12:26 CST
A week ago, the New Horizons team announced an effort to gather signatures in support of a petition to the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate the historic flyby of Pluto on a stamp.�
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