Posted on 07/11/2015 5:05:40 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Take a good look at the latest picture of Pluto because it shows the face of the dwarf planet that will not be seen during next week's historic flyby.
The US space agency's New Horizons probe was less than 2.5 million km from the diminutive world on Saturday and closing in fast.
Come Tuesday, it will be grabbing shots from an altitude of just 12,500km.
But the newly published image, showing Pluto's "spots", is of the hemisphere that will soon rotate out of view.
It will not be seen again until after New Horizons has gone behind the 2,300km-wide dwarf, and then only in the faint light reflected off the little planet's biggest moon, Charon.
That in itself should make for some fascinating science, however, because it will tell researchers what happens on Pluto's dark side.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
A clear case of planet shaming.
So we’ll never know what those darn spots are then. :(
Lame explanation. New Horizons was definitely not on minimum energy trajectory. It also got a gravity boost from Jupiter that cut four years off the trip. Economics and reliability probably played a big role in the mission planning. A faster trajectory costs more fuel, but is over sooner, so less time for instruments and computers to fail.
Thanks for the heads zup!
“Come Tuesday, it will be grabbing shots from an altitude of just 12,500km.”
Im going to wait for the higher resolution shots form Tuesdaty
Lets hope Kim Jung Un-Hinged doesn’t HACK it before then
lol
North Korea takes over the deep space probe
That would be a story
Who could ever be More Spaced out than The Great Leader Kim Jung Un-Hinged??
I doff my cap.
“And we’re still collecting data from it, almost on a daily basis.”
Are you serious?? Sounds impossible!
You can check here. Every now and then the Voyagers will show up. Maybe not now, because New Horizons is a big priority.
http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Thanks BenLurkin.
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