Pluto / New Horizons

Started by Phobos, July 13, 2015, 07:46:34 AM

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New Horizons will fly past Pluto at 7:49AM EST tomorrow. Here is the official NASA website for this historic event.  :cheers:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php

That's awesome. Hope there's a really detailed report on it and their findings, at least one that's released to the general public.
photobucket limit image removed

That 7 year old astronomer in me is going crazy right now...
"I would explain it to you but your head might explode."


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/15/pluto-mission-nasa-reveals-first-high-resolution-images-of-planets-surface
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150715

QuoteA new close-up image of an equatorial region near the base of Pluto's bright heart-shaped feature shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.

The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old solar system. This suggests the close-up region, which covers about one percent of Pluto's surface, may still be geologically active today.

"This is one of the youngest surfaces we've ever seen in the solar system," said Jeff Moore of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape. "This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds," says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer, SwRI.