The US probe New Horizons is now “free way” to approach Pluto, to move closer to the dwarf planet on July 14 provided, according to its trajectory Initial. Having scanned the area since mid-May with a powerful telescopic camera to detect dust clouds, planetary rings and other potential obstacles, New Horizons team concluded that the ship could remain on the deemed optimum trajectory for observations . planned and will carry 14 July a historical overview of the distant dwarf planet, according to its original path
See also: NASA: Pluto is in the viewfinder of the probe New Horizons
See also: NASA’s New Horizons probe begins its exploration of Pluto and send color images
New Horizons will fly over Pluto on July 14
New Horizons advance at 49,600 km / h to the mysterious planet and its five moons. At that speed, even a large debris like a grain of sand can be catastrophic for the probe, officials explain the mission. “We all breathed a sigh of relief that the coast was clear,” said Jim Green Wednesday, the head of planetary science at NASA.
“We will collect more data and -images other measures- keeping the original path, “he added. -if A change of course was necessarily should have been made on or before July 4. When the cameras New Horizons were close enough to Pluto in June, NASA had considered the risk of catastrophic crash to less than 1%.
“The Failure to have discovered new moons or dust rings was a bit of a surprise, “notes Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the scientist in charge of the mission, adding that the probe works perfectly.
On July 2, New Horizons was within 15 million kilometers of Pluto and will pass as close to 12,500 kilometers on 14 July. She will have traveled five billion kilometers since the start of his journey.
Mysterious dark spots arouse the greatest interest
The last images transmitted on July 2, which are in color and become clearer by the day, show two very different sides of the distant planet.
On the one seen along the equator a series of dark spots of 480 km in diameter each, with an area equivalent to the state of Missouri and are evenly spaced.
such spots have never been observed, raising great interest in the scientific team from New Horizons, mainly due to the remarkable regularity of their spacing and size.
“This is a real enigma … and we look forward to approach to find”
” Large differences in color and appearance of Pluto and Charon, one of its moons is dark and gray, “is another surprising observation, he noted . Despite the low light Pluto and Charon, New Horizons should collect data on the geology of the two stars and establish a precise topography.
Alan Stern this exploration of Pluto “will have no equivalent scientific benefits from the Voyager missions in the 1980s.”
Spectrometers and embedded cameras
Pluto , discovered in 1930, has an atmosphere made up of nitrogen, seasons complex system of distinct geological characteristics and is composed primarily of rock and ice. The dwarf planet revolves around the sun in 247.7 years. With a diameter of 2,300 km, it is smaller than our moon and a mass 500 times lower than that of the Earth.
Pluto could also possess an ocean of water under the thick layer of ice, as its moon Charon, where an atmosphere could exist. After Pluto , the probe will continue its journey to be closer to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a vast pile of debris beyond the orbit of Neptune, at left the birth of the solar system there is 4.6 billion years.
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, the team of New Horizons has identified three potentially interesting objects that the probe could go scrutinize. With a diameter of 25-55 km, they are about 1.5 billion km Pluto . The ship carries on board seven instruments, including spectrometers infrared images and ultraviolet, two cameras including a telescopic high-resolution spectrometers and two powerful particle.
New Horizons depends for its power of one thermoelectric generator and works with less power than two 100-watt bulbs
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