New Horizons Pluto Mission update thread

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Images from the New Horizons mission suggest that Pluto's moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that may have hosted life.
It has long since frozen and expanded, pushing it outward and causing the moon's surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale.

A close-up of the canyons on Charon, Pluto's big moon, taken by New Horizons during its close approach to the Pluto system last July. Multiple views taken by New Horizons as it passed by Charon allow stereo measurements of topography, shown in the color-coded version of the image. The scale bar indicates relative elevation





The side of Pluto's largest moon viewed by Nasa's passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterised by a system of 'pull apart' tectonic faults.
This is seen as ridges, scarps and valleys - the latter sometimes reaching more than 4 miles (6.5km) deep.
Charon's tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and became fractured as it stretched.
The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice.
This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charon's own internal heat of formation.
Scientists say Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface oceanoa


But as Charon cooled over time, this ocean would have frozen and expanded - as happens when water freezes - lifting the outermost layers of the moon and producing the massive chasms we see today.
The latest image from New Horizons shows part of the feature informally named Serenity Chasma, part of a vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon.
This system of chasms is one of the longest seen anywhere in the solar system, running at least 1,100 miles (about 1,800km) long and reaching 4.5 miles (7.5km) deep.
By comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446km) long and just over a mile (1.6km) deep.
The lower portion of the image shows colour-coded topography of the same scene.

Measurements of the shape of this feature tells scientists that Charon's water ice layer may have been at least partially liquid in its early history, and has since refrozen.
At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system.
New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they're finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.
'We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,' said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute.
'But I couldn't be more delighted with what we see

 

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Video by GeoBeats News which basically covers the post above:

New image of .. hell if I know

These images were taken to search for any evidence of dust rings in the Pluto system. Small particles are strongly forward scattering, so observations after closest approach might be able to see rings even though they weren’t detected during the approach to Pluto. One problem, however, is that scattered sunlight produces a high background level that reduces our ability to see dust rings. This situation is similar to what happens when you’re driving your car and the Sun is directly in front of you. The dirt on your windshield is now easy to see, but you’re also fighting the glare from the Sun.

 

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Nasa has revealed these incredible images of Pluto's northernmost region, revealing the incredible diversity of its frozen terrain - and its strange yellow hue.
They show vast canyons up to 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide, and giant pits that are 45 miles (70 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep.

The enhanced colour image of the north polar area shows long canyons run vertically across the polar area—part of the informally named Lowell Regio, named for Percival Lowell, who founded Lowell Observatory and initiated the search that led to Pluto's discovery.
The widest of the canyons (yellow in the image below) – is about 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide and runs close to the north pole.
Roughly parallel subsidiary canyons to the east and west (in green) are approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide.
The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material.
These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics.
A shallow, winding valley (in blue) runs the entire length of the canyon floor. To the east of these canyons, another valley (pink) winds toward the bottom-right corner of the image.
The nearby terrain, at bottom right, appears to have been blanketed by material that obscures small-scale topographic features, creating a 'softened' appearance for the landscape.
Large, irregularly-shaped pits (in red), reach 45 miles (70 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep, scarring the region.
These pits may indicate locations where subsurface ice has melted or sublimated from below, causing the ground to collapse.
The color and composition of this region – shown in enhanced color – also are unusual.
High elevations show up in a distinctive yellow, not seen elsewhere on Pluto.
The yellowish terrain fades to a uniform bluish gray at lower elevations and latitudes.
New Horizons' infrared measurements show methane ice is abundant across Lowell Regio, and there is relatively little nitrogen ice.
'One possibility is that the yellow terrains may correspond to older methane deposits that have been more processed by solar radiation than the bluer terrain,' said Will Grundy, New Horizons composition team lead from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.
The image was obtained by New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC)

 

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New high-quality image


Due to very low downlink rates with a spacecraft that is 3 billion miles away (and counting), it will take more than a year to get every bit down from the Pluto encounter sequence. Today – about 7 months after the encounter – more than half of the data is still on the spacecraft! Because of the long duration downlink period, it is important that this work is done as efficiently as possible.

To facilitate the playback of New Horizons' encounter data, there's a piece of software, called DataTrack. DataTrack consists of a web-based user interface, with a MySQL database backend. It helps keep track of all data sets from the encounter load, and at what stage they are in the downlink process. It also helps track the processes of mathematical data compression on New Horizons.

New Horizons DataTrack UI

 

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New processed videos: rotations of Nix and Charon

 

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Nasa's New Horizons team have discovered a chain of exotic snowcapped mountains stretching across the dark expanse on Pluto informally named Cthulhu region.
The area stretches nearly halfway around Pluto's equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum.

The reddish enhanced colour image shown as the left inset reveals a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that’s 260 miles (420km) long. The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red color of the surrounding plains. The right inset also shows how the bright ice on the mountains matches up with the distribution of methane (purple)


Measuring around 1,850 miles (3,000km) long and 450 miles (750km) wide, Cthulhu (pronounced kuh-THU-lu) is a bit larger than the state of Alaska.
Cthulhu's appearance is characterised by a dark surface, which scientists think is due to being covered by a layer of dark tholins.
Tholins are complex molecules that form when methane is exposed to sunlight.

Cthulhu's geology exhibits a wide variety of landscapes - from mountainous to smooth, and to heavily cratered and fractured.
The reddish enhanced colour image reveals a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that's 260 miles (420km) long.
The range is situated among craters, with narrow valleys separating its peaks.
The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red colour of the surrounding plains.

 

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Clouds on Pluto

In an e-mail exchange with New Scientist, Lowell Observatory astronomer Will Grundy discusses the possibility that streaks and small condensations within the hazes might be individual clouds. Grundy also tracked a feature as it passed over different parts of the Plutonian landscape below, strongly suggesting a cloud. If confirmed, they’d be the first-ever clouds seen on the dwarf planet, and a sign this small 1,473-mile-wide (2,370 km) orb possesses an even more complex atmosphere than imagined.

Recent images sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show possible clouds floating over the frozen landscape including the hazy streak right of center. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

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Faint arrows along Pluto’s limb point to possible clouds in a low altitude haze layer. More distinct possible clouds are arrowed at left. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

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15 minutes after its closest approach, New Horizons snapped this image of the smooth expanse of Sputnik Planum (right) flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
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new images and comments from their blog:

If you look to the upper left of Pluto's 'heart', informally-named Sputnik Planum, you will see some chaotic terrain that is very different than the almost smooth terrain of the icy plains. These are the Al-Idrisi Montes, and they are filled with blocks measuring miles to tens of miles across.

The blocks within even a very small region can be very different. Some are really distinct and appear to be taller – without any other blocks touching them – while others get a bit more complicated.

 

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before: best pre-flyby maps of Pluto, made from images from the Hubble Space Telescope

after: Map of Pluto from New Horizons

A nearly top-down view of Pluto's icy plains, showing dark lanes reminiscent of glacial moraines.

Methane snow-capped mountains in Cthulhu Regio

 

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Far in the western hemisphere, scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission have discovered what looks like a giant “bite mark” on Pluto's surface. They suspect it may be caused by a process known as sublimation. The methane ice-rich surface on Pluto may be sublimating away into the atmosphere, exposing a layer of water-ice underneath.

In this image, north is up. The southern portion of the left inset above shows the cratered plateau uplands informally named Vega Terra (note that all feature names are informal). A jagged scarp, or wall of cliffs, known as Piri Rupes borders the young, nearly crater-free plains of Piri Planitia. The cliffs break up into isolated mesas in several places.

Cutting diagonally across the mottled plains is the long extensional fault of Inanna Fossa, which stretches eastward 370 miles (600 kilometers) from here to the western edge of the great nitrogen ice plains of Sputnik Planum.

Compositional data from the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shown in the right inset, indicate that the plateau uplands south of Piri Rupes are rich in methane ice (shown in false color as purple). Scientists speculate that sublimation of methane may be causing the plateau material to erode along the face of the cliffs, causing them to retreat south and leave the plains of Piri Planitia in their wake.

Compositional data also show that the surface of Piri Planitia is more enriched in water ice (shown in false color as blue) than the higher plateaus, which may indicate that Piri Planitia’s surface is made of water ice bedrock, just beneath a layer of retreating methane ice. Because the surface of Pluto is so cold, the water ice is rock-like and immobile. The light/dark mottled pattern of Piri Planitia in the left inset is reflected in the composition map, with the lighter areas corresponding to areas richer in methane – these may be remnants of methane that have not yet sublimated away entirely.

 

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The image above is what geologists call 'bladed' terrain in a region known as Tartarus Dorsa, located in the rough highlands on the eastern side of Tombaugh Regio. Surface features appear to be texturally 'snakeskin'-like, owing to their north-south oriented scaly raised relief. These bladed structures have typical relief of ~ 500 m. Their relative spacing of ~ 3-5 km makes them some of the steepest features seen on Pluto.

 

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New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer's Pluto system flyby. These five detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto – revealing the former 'astronomer's planet' to be a real world with diverse and active geology, exotic surface chemistry, a complex atmosphere, puzzling interaction with the Sun and an intriguing system of small moons.

Sputnik Planum on Pluto (top) and Vulcan Planum on Charon (bottom). The Vulcan Planum view in the bottom panel includes the “moated mountain” Clarke Mons just above the center of the image. The water ice-rich plains display a range of surface textures, from smooth and grooved at left, to pitted and hummocky at right.

Click here for a full article

 

[Niteblooded]

Now that we have all these pictures and data I really want to see an all out game set on Pluto. Maybe something Metroid-esque so I can explore both the surface and under the surface in large detailed caverns. If any game designers are reading this, make it happen!

So many games set on made up worlds when we have interesting planets in our very own solar system.

On a related note, I'm looking forward to the Juno mission. I been fascinated with Jupiter ever since I was a little kid. Not going to get any pictures that can pierce that atmosphere but the data should be really cool. Maybe the close up pics will give us some really nice texture shots of its atmosphere.

 

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CU-Boulder student-built dust counter got few “hits” on Pluto flyby​

Data downloaded and analyzed by the New Horizons team indicated the space environment around Pluto and its moons contained only about 6 dust particles per cubic mile.

The bottom line is that space is mostly empty. Any debris created when Pluto's moons were captured or created during impacts has long since been removed by planetary processes.

Studying the microscopic dust grains can give researchers clues about how the solar system was formed billions of years ago and how it works today, providing information on planets, moons and comets.

The CU-Boulder dust counter is a thin film resting on a honeycombed aluminum structure the size of a cake pan mounted on the spacecraft's exterior. A small electronic box functions as the instrument's “brain” to assess each individual dust particle that strikes the detector, allowing the students to infer the mass of each particle.

Peering into Pluto's Past​

• Cathy Olkin, deputy project scientist from SwRI, describing how New Horizons measured the radar reflectivity of Pluto and shattered the record for most-distant object ever explored by radar. “It's a record that should stand for decades or longer – unless, of course, we use that technique again when New Horizons encounters another Kuiper Belt object,” Olkin says.

• Richard Binzel, co-investigator from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, reporting on a new understanding of Pluto's long-term climate variations that include the finding that Pluto has both “tropics” and arctic regions. “Right now, Pluto is between two extreme climate states. We are just beginning to understand the long-term climate of Pluto.”

• Principal Investigator Stern reporting on evidence that Pluto's long-term polar axis shifts drive sharp changes in the planet's atmospheric pressure over time, possibly causing Pluto's atmosphere to be much more massive than that of even Mars. “This opens up the possibility that liquid nitrogen may have once or even many times flowed on Pluto's surface.”

• Orkan Umurhan, postdoctoral researcher from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, discussing the discovery and extensive variety of glacial landforms, glacial flow, and glacial erosion across Pluto. “There are two likely scenarios for the erosion we see. It could be gradual, when much of Pluto's nitrogen ice was lost over time. Or, it could be part of a cycle in which the nitrogen ice evaporates and redeposits on the highlands, before flowing back into the plains. In all likelihood, both scenarios have been and still are operating.”

• Kelsi Singer, postdoctoral researcher from SwRI, reporting on the first age-dating of Pluto's satellite system from crater counts, showing for the first time that the giant impact believed to have created all of Pluto's known satellites cannot be recent and instead occurred some 4 billion years ago.

 

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The Contraction/Expansion History of Charon with implication for its Planetary Scale Tectonic Belt

The New-Horizons mission to the Kuiper Belt has recently revealed intriguing features on the surface of Charon, including a network of chasmata, cutting across or around a series of high topography features, conjoining to form a belt. It is proposed that this tectonic belt is a consequence of contraction/expansion episodes in the moon's evolution associated particularly with compaction, differentiation and geophysical reactions of the interior. The proposed scenario involves no need for solidification of a vast subsurface ocean and/or a warm initial state. This scenario is based on a new, detailed thermo-physical evolution model of Charon that includes multiple processes. According to the model, Charon experienced two contraction/expansion episodes in its history that may provide the proper environment for the formation of the tectonic belt.

However, there may be a different alternative to explain Charon's surface features. A cold initial state could be consistent with all three formation scenarios currently proposed in the scientific literature for Charon:

1) The hypothesis that Pluto and Charon formed in place as a pair
2) Charon was captured by Pluto
3) Charon formed as a result of a giant impact into Pluto (currently the favored hypothesis).

 

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Pluto's surface may have been covered with lakes and rivers flowing of liquid nitrogen.
While much of this has now frozen, researchers suspect there maybe pockets of the liquid on the surface today.

Researchers say the large flat areas on Pluto's surface were likely formed by bodies of still liquid and the terrain networks could be a result of nitrogen rivers. Broken terrain on the northwestern edge of the vast, icy plain informally called Sputnik Planum


They believe the dwarf planet held enough atmospheric pressure at the time to increase temperatures where it could support liquid nitrogen on the crust.

Researchers are excited about this new finding, as it could solve the mystery that has surrounded the Pluto's surface.
'We see what for all the world looks to a lot of our team like a former lake,' said mission leader Alan Stern.
'It's very smooth, as if a liquid has frozen across one height.'
'It's hard to come up with an alternate model that would explain that morphology.'
The idea of nitrogen ice melting on a celestial body 3.67 million miles from the sun, may sound absurd, but scientists believe it is because of Pluto's unique rotation.
This discovery was made by analyzing data from New Horizon's model that is based on the history of Pluto's climate and atmospheric pressure, reports New Scientist.

Researchers are excited about this new finding, as it could solve the mystery that has surrounded the Pluto's surface. Ancient, heavily cratered terrain is seen coated with dark, reddish tholins. The flat areas may once been pools of liquid nitrogen

 

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Oberon, moon of Uranus (left), and Charon, moon of Pluto (right). These worlds are of similar size and both exhibit intriguing geology.

Some old images of models of Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt dust influx to Pluto.

 

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Unposted diagrams and a video

 

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Scientists say they have evidence that dense frozen nitrogen in this region, known as Tombaugh Regio, changed the dwarf planet's orientation.

The theory was announced last week at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.
Researchers believe an area known as Sputnik Planum - which lies to the west side of the heart - forms the remnants of a large crater now filled with nitrogen ice.
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/

Unlike Earth, whose spin axis is only slightly tilted, Pluto is like a spinning top lying on its side.
This means, the dwarf planet's poles get the most sunlight.
Over the course of a Pluto year, nitrogen and other exotic gases condense on the permanently shadowed regions.

Sputnik Planum, the left lobe of Pluto’s heart, is a expanse of frozen nitrogen that lies close to the dwarf planet’s equator — too close to be a coincidence, two planetary researchers suggest. So much ice has piled up here that it could have dragged Pluto with it and reoriented its spin axis. Charon is seen in the background


Eventually, as Pluto goes around the sun, those frozen gases heat up, become gaseous again and re-condense on the other side of the planet.
'Each time Pluto goes around the sun, a bit of nitrogen accumulates in the heart,' said James Keane of the University of Tuscon, Arizona, who led one of the teams.
'And once enough ice has piled up, maybe a hundred meters thick, it starts to overwhelm the planet's shape, which dictates the planet's orientation.
'And if you have an excess of mass in one spot on the planet, it wants to go to the equator. Eventually, over millions of years, it will drag the whole planet over.'
Keane's team used observations made during New Horizons' flyby and combined them with computer models.
The models allowed them to take a surface feature such as Sputnik Planum, and shift it around on the planet's surface to see what that does to the planet's spin axis.

This area seems to line up 'suspiciously well' with the tidal axis that links Pluto to its large moon, Charon, scientists.
The tidal axis is an imaginary line that wraps around the dwarf planet, and indicates where the gravitational pull from the Charon is the strongest.
'If Sputnik Planum were a large positive mass anomaly — perhaps due to loading of nitrogen ice — then (it) would naturally migrate to the tidal axis as Pluto approaches a minimum energy state,' Keane and Matsuyama write.
This means the massive accumulation of ice would end up where it causes the least wobble in Pluto's spin axis.
This phenomenon of polar wander — a planet shifting its spin axis — is something that was discovered with the Earth's moon and with Mars, as well, but in those cases it happened in the distant past, billions of years ago.

 

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NASA's New Horizons Fills Gap in Space Environment Observations

Maaan, this gif gives me a headache .....

Space environment data collected by New Horizons over a billion miles of its journey to Pluto will play a key role in testing and improving models of the space environment throughout the solar system. This visualization is one example of such a model: It shows the simulated space environment out to Pluto a few months before New Horizons’ closest approach.

Drawn over the model is the path of New Horizons up to 2015, as well as the current direction of the two Voyager spacecraft - which are currently at 3-4 times New Horizons’ distance from the sun. The solar wind that New Horizons encountered will reach the Voyager spacecraft about a year later.

This figure shows solar wind observations measured by New Horizons from Jan. 1 - Aug. 25, 2015. This measurement of seed particles for anomalous cosmic rays in the solar wind is completely new in this region of space and is key for interpreting Voyager data further out in the interstellar boundary region. Points closer to the top of the graph correspond to higher-energy particles, and red and yellow colors show a larger number of particles hitting the detector. The particle instruments were shut down during certain spacecraft operations and trajectory maneuvers, resulting in brief data gaps.

 

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As shown in the enhanced color image above this feature consists of at least six extensional fractures (indicated by white arrows) converging to a point near the center. The longest fractures are aligned roughly north-south, and the longest of all, the informally named Sleipnir Fossa, is > 580 km long.

The curious radiating pattern of the fractures forming the 'spider' may be caused by a focused source of stress in the crust under the point where the fractures converge.

Location of the 'spider' at the eastern edge of Pluto.

 

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new mosaic

Pluto's Haze Varies in Brightness

The brightness variations may be due to buoyancy/gravity waves which are typically launched by the flow of air over mountain ranges. Atmospheric gravity waves are known to occur on Earth, Mars and now, likely, Pluto as well.

 

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The upper image sports several dozen “haloed” craters. The largest crater, at bottom-right, measures ~50 km across. The craters' bright walls and rims stand out from their dark floors and surrounding terrain, creating the halo effect.

The lower image indicates a connection between the bright halos and distribution of methane ice, shown in false color as purple. The floors and terrain between craters show signs of water ice, colored in blue. Exactly why the bright methane ice settles on these crater rims and walls is a mystery; also puzzling is why this same effect doesn't occur broadly across Pluto.

 

[alucasa]

Holy shit, possible clouds on Pluto?!
That changes almost everything I know about Pluto.