ForumGarden

Anyone else been following the New Horizon Pluto Fly-by?

The last planet in the Solar system to finally be getting some attention.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa ... luto-flyby

Thanks for the alert.

New Horizons spacecraft will be out of communication with mission control as it gathers data on Pluto and its moons.


I didn't know Pluto had moons.

This will be neat.

tude dog;1482636 wrote: I didn't know Pluto had moons. The biggest was found fairly on a photograph in the 70s, the other four - to date - were picked out recently by Hubble. I expect next week there'll be more. I do hope New Horizons is capable of taking up-close portraits of the moons as well as Pluto proper.

I am anxiously awaiting what photos and information it sends, this is so cool.

ForumGarden has negotiated with the International Astronomical Association and acquired the right to name the next three moons of Pluto, so if anyone has suitable suggestions? I thought we might call one of them Tombstone.

Cold, menacing and distant. I've got a few old girlfriends I have in mind

Snowfire;1482654 wrote: Cold, menacing and distant. I've got a few old girlfriends I have in mind


Good grief! :wah:

spot;1482647 wrote: ForumGarden has negotiated with the International Astronomical Association and acquired the right to name the next three moons of Pluto, so if anyone has suitable suggestions? I thought we might call one of them Tombstone.
Goofy, Mickey & Minnie.

It's now 24 hours until the after-fly-by signal is due to arrive, it seems no more communications are expected until then. There must be some finger-crossing going on in the control room.

I find I'm actually waiting up until well gone midnight just to see the next NASA press release.

How extraordinary...Mission scientist John Spencer told journalists that the first close-up image of Pluto's surface showed a terrain that had been resurfaced by some geological process - such as volcanism - within the last 100 million years.

"We have not found a single impact crater on this image. This means it must be a very young surface," he said.

New Horizons: Images reveal ice mountains on Pluto - BBC News

How on earth - how on Pluto, excuse me - could that possibly happen?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15 ... _horizons/

I'm confused. They say that they couldn't see any craters, yet from the overall shot of the entire planet there seem to be quite a few of them. It's just that the part they zoomed in on wasn't one of those cratered regions.

The next question has to be that now we know that there is water ice on the surface of the planet, whether or not there is the possibility of life there. After all, even on the Earth there are extremophile lifeforms to be found within the deepest ice formations of the polar caps.

FourPart;1482828 wrote: I'm confused. They say that they couldn't see any craters, yet from the overall shot of the entire planet there seem to be quite a few of them. It's just that the part they zoomed in on wasn't one of those cratered regions.


They are, I think, talking in relative terms. On the earth's moon there is no site at all which forms part of the original surface from when it most recently solidified, the cratering is rings within rings within rings as you look on a wider and wider scale.

That's clearly not the case on either Pluto or Charon, but there was no such expectation before the photos started to arrive. Nobody expected the surface of either to have reformed since they were created, or last smashed apart and were recreated, and yet the features suggest that every area of both bodies was molten within the most recent 2% of their lifetime.

The new question seems to be where the heat for that melting process arises. Yes there's been cratering since it last set, but not a lot. Neither body looks cratered the way earth's moon is cratered, not in the slightest.

FourPart;1482657 wrote: Goofy, Mickey & Minnie.You beat me to it! I was about to post:

"Never go to Pluto - it's a mickey-mouse planet!" - Robin Williams as Mork.

Pluto is also the smallest (known) planet in our system. Its moons are, no doubt, much smaller. Therefore, does it not make sense that they would have less mas & therefore much less gravitational attraction to other objects to crash into it.

As with our own earth, Pluto was probably no different to any of the others starting of as a simple ball of molten rock, cooling slowly over billions of years Tidal currents being caused by all the moons working together and/or in opposition. Tidal, of course, doesn't necessarily just apply to water, but any liquid, including lava. Geological activity, such as earthquakes were not as much a surprise, and some degree of heat (although not so much in relative terms) would be formed from friction.