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GoodOwl Offline
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Post: #1
OT: NASA / Space Exploration Thread
Pluto PRESS CONFERENCE LINK LIVE NOW!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html


Lots of data and pictures to come over the next days, weeks and months ahead! I remember Voyager's Grand Tour. So cool these scientists get the chance to live react/explain on a totally new planet!

[Image: 60bb33ed537fec013c87e5ecb49babb5.JPG]

Wow!

Charon:

[Image: nh-charon.jpg?itok=46XaGzbi]

Icy mountains of Pluto:

[Image: nh-pluto-surface-scale.jpg?itok=bnj3E-9A]
(This post was last modified: 03-01-2023 02:06 PM by GoodOwl.)
07-15-2015 02:50 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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Post: #2
RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conference Live Now- New images-explanations
main page at NASA for Pluto/New Horizons:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhor...index.html

Next Pluto press conference Fri, July 17, 2015 at 1pm Eastern Time!
07-15-2015 03:07 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conference Live Now- New images-explanations
Pluto's Moon Hydra emerges from the shadows

[Image: nh-hydra_1_0.jpg?itok=-Ub5-NU9]

Since its discovery in 2005, Pluto's moon Hydra has been known only as a fuzzy dot of uncertain shape, size, and reflectivity. Imaging obtained during New Horizons' historic transit of the Pluto-Charon system and transmitted to Earth early this morning has definitively resolved these fundamental properties of Pluto's outermost moon. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) observations revealed an irregularly shaped body characterized by significant brightness variations over the surface. With a resolution of 2 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel, the LORRI image shows the tiny potato-shaped moon measures 27 miles (43 kilometers) by 20 miles (33 kilometers).

Like that of Charon, Hydra's surface is probably covered with water ice, the most abundant ice in the universe. Observed within Hydra's bright regions is a darker circular structure with a diameter of approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers). Hydra's reflectivity (the percentage of incident light reflected from the surface) is intermediate between that of Pluto and Charon. "New Horizons has finally nailed the basic physical properties of Hydra," says Hal Weaver, New Horizons Project Scientist and LORRI science operations lead. "We're going to see Hydra even better in the images yet to come."

Hydra was approximately 400,000 miles away from New Horizons when the image was acquired.

Image Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI
Last Updated: July 15, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert
07-15-2015 03:12 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conference Live Now- New images-explanations
yesterday's press conference:

New Horizons Mission Update – July 14, 2015 (Morning)
NASA





A 16-month data waterfall begins to flow! 1000 times better than what we could do with the Hubble Space Telescope! Awesome!

Pluto appears to be a very diverse world and system--more-so than anyone would have thought.
07-15-2015 03:17 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conference Live Now- New images-explanations
Some brief, exciting new discoveries from the day before (July 13, 2015):

Pluto Is Unexpectedly Large - New Horizons Mission | Video Update





Pluto is now unquestionable the largest object in the Kuiper Belt.

"Fasten Your Seatbelts--New Horizons has arrived at the Pluto system!"
07-15-2015 03:27 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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Post: #6
RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
LIVE News conference on more Pluto info/ data coming in!!

We only have 1% of data so far. By next week we will have about 5% of data back. This will be going on for awhile, folks!

LIVE NEWS CONFERENCE LINK: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
07-17-2015 01:16 PM
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Post: #7
RE: OT: LIve NOW!! PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
Pretty impressive. Do we need NASA or the Dept of Education? :)
(07-17-2015 01:16 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  LIVE News conference on more Pluto info/ data coming in!!

We only have 1% of data so far. By next week we will have about 5% of data back. This will be going on for awhile, folks!

LIVE NEWS CONFERENCE LINK: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
07-17-2015 01:21 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
NASA releases new data, pictures from Pluto flyby
By Stephen Feller | July 17, 2015 at 3:27 PM

[Image: NASA-releases-new-data-pictures-from-Pluto-flyby.jpg]
This annotated view of a portion of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, named for Earth’s first artificial satellite, shows an array of enigmatic features. The surface appears to be divided into irregularly shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs, some of which contain darker materials. Features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits are also visible. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles. Features as small as a half-mile across are visible. The blocky appearance of some features is due to compression of the image. Photo courtesy of NASA

WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- NASA researchers have "maybe" 2 percent of the data and images the New Horizons probe gathered about Pluto during its 22-hour trip past the distant planet.

Officials at the space agency excitedly released the second round of data downloaded from New Horizons, which was characterized by closer pictures and animations of the planet than have been shown yet, and theories on the makeup and movement of Pluto's atmosphere.

"I think the solar system saved the best for last," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo., said at a press conference Friday to release more data and "beautiful eye candy" collected near the planet.

Now more than 2 million miles past Pluto, New Horizons has about 2 percent, or less than a gigabyte, of the 50 gigabytes of information it has collected. The expectation is that about 5 percent will have been sent back to Earth over the next week. NASA has scheduled a press conference for July 24 to announce the next round of pictures and information that will be released.

Pictures already sent back have shown frozen, craterless, icy plains on the planet, as well as mountains that rise as high over Pluto's surface as the Rocky Mountains are over Earth.

The plains of the Tombaugh Regio, formerly referred to as the "heart feature," are now believed to be carbon monoxide rich, and also somewhat more recent than some other parts of the planet based on the smoothness of the topography in the region.

"Let's remind ourselves that some surfaces of Pluto are marked with craters indicating its age," said Jeffrey Moore, New Horizons co-investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "All of this indicates that Pluto has experienced a long geographic history."

Based on the pictures sent so far, Moore said that fractures in Pluto's crust and the existence of mountainous regions means some kind of tectonics or "mountain building forces" must exist there. Additionally, he said that erosion processes appear to be functioning on the planet, based on some of what can be seen in photos.

Other areas showed mysterious pock marks and features that Moore briefly mused about the potentials of before stopping himself short. "We are in the most preliminary stages of our investigations. Jumping to conclusions comes at great peril," he said.

This second bit of data from New Horizons also is significant because researchers have been able to start informing theories that have long been held about Pluto's atmosphere, which appears to be nitrogren-based.

"We've had to wait until we were past Pluto and looking at the sun to get our best data," said Randy Gladstone, New Horizons co-investigator at SwRI in San Antonio. "We're looking forward to getting full data in a month or so."

What they know already is that nitrogen is evaporating off the surface of the planet and escaping into the atmosphere because the gravity there is much weaker than on Earth or Mars, according to Fran Bagenal, a New Horizons co-investigator at the University of Colorado. As the nitrogen enters Pluto's atmosphere, it is being picked up by solar winds.

The escaping nitrogen is ionized as it leaves the planet and is hit by the solar winds, which has created a tail of atmosphere behind the planet. "We have actually flown through this," Bagenal said, "The data we get next month will allow us to quantify the amount of that escaping atmosphere."

Over the next several months, the researchers said they will begin to get composition maps, thermal maps, and topographical maps that will allow them to learn much more about planet.
07-17-2015 03:09 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations




NASA News Conference on the New Horizons Mission posted July 17, 2015
07-17-2015 03:13 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
[Image: pluto-observations-through-the-years.gif]

Views of Pluto Through the Years
July 15, 2015

This animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.
07-23-2015 12:30 PM
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Owl75 Offline
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Post: #11
RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
Very cool stuff thanks for posting
07-23-2015 01:54 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
New Pluto pictures astonish scientists -- again
By William Harwood CBS News September 24, 2015, 5:49 PM

[Image: 092415plutoglobe.jpg]
This near-full image of Pluto provides the best global view yet obtained, a mosaic of images beamed back from the New Horizon's probe during its July flyby of the dwarf planet. NASA

Of the spectacular new images sent back of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons July 14 flyby of the icy dwarf planet, perhaps most stunning is a color mosaic made up of the high-resolution images transmitted back to date.

It shows a nearly full globe, allowing viewers to zoom in on features across the surface, from dark, cratered terrains and ice mountains to the smooth, frozen plains marking the now-familiar "heart" of Pluto, dubbed Sputnik Planum, to the strangely ridged terrain that so far defies explanation.

"It's a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles," William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead, said in a NASA release describing the ridged terrain.

"It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology," he said. "This'll really take time to figure out. Maybe it's some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto's faint sunlight."

A new high-resolution view reveals unusual linear ridges stretching across hundreds of miles, along with deep canyons and smooth plains blanketed by sharp shadows from the strange-looking ridges:

[Image: 092415pluto1.jpg]
In a scene measuring 330 miles across, strange linear ridges can be seen on Pluto's surface, along with a deep canyon and isolated plains. NASA

Another picture, the highest-resolution image yet returned by New Horizons, shows dune-like structures in what a NASA description said appears to be a "shrinking glacial ice lake" along with nearby "fractured, angular water ice mountains with sheer cliffs."

The near-global map, in cylindrical projection, is not yet complete, but it adds another powerful tool for scientists to begin understanding the structure and evolution of Pluto's intriguing surface. An equally stunning, zoomable nearly-full globe view shows the planet as it might appear to an astronaut on final approach.

"Pluto's surface colors were enhanced in this (cylindrical projection) view to reveal subtle details in a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges and deep reds," said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead. "Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a wonderfully complex geological and climatological story that we have only just begun to decode."

[Image: 092415pluto2.jpg]
A high-resolution closeup showing the smooth plain of Sputnik Planum butting up against more mountainous terrain. The dune-like ripples are not yet explained. NASA

Along with the new pictures, the New Horizons team provided a map showing the distribution of methane ice across the part of Pluto's surface that has been seen to date. Sputnik Planum, a bright, smooth plain, shows relatively high concentrations as do brighter crater rims and ridges. No methane shows up inside deep craters or across the dwarf planet's darker regions.

Scientists do not yet know whether the methane somehow favors the brighter areas or if the ice makes the regions bright to begin with.

"It's like the classic chicken-or-egg problem," Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team lead, said in the NASA release. "We're unsure why this is so, but the cool thing is that New Horizons has the ability to make exquisite compositional maps across the surface of Pluto, and that'll be crucial to resolving how enigmatic Pluto works."

[Image: 092415plutozoom.jpg]
A zoomed-in portion of a new global mosaic showing the full range of Pluto's intriguing terrain, from dark mountainous, heavily cratered zones to the smooth, frozen plains of Sputnik Planum to strangely ridged features that defy easy explanation. NASA

Said Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator: "I wish Pluto's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh had lived to see this day."

New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14 and as of Thursday was 72 days and more than 53 million miles beyond the dwarf planet.

Because of the vast distances involved -- more than 3 billion miles -- the size of the spacecraft's antenna and the power of its transmitters, it will take more than a year and a half for New Horizons to beam back all of its stored imagery and data. The science team is releasing selected photos every week or so as new images come in.

Gallery of 38 more new pictures here

About William Harwood:

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 125 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."
09-25-2015 06:07 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
New Horizons Sends Back Stunning Image of Pluto's Moon Charon

By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
October 2, 2015 4:40 PM
Good Morning America

[Image: HT_charon_nasa_mm_151002_16x9_992.jpg]
New Horizons Sends Back Stunning Image of Pluto's Moon Charon (ABC News)

The cracks, bruises and colorful spots on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are captured in stunning new detail in photos sent back to Earth by NASA's New Horizons probe.

The high-resolution images of Charon show the complex terrain covered in mountains and craters. A canyon system stretching 1,000 miles across the face of Charon is four times as long as the Grand Canyon and twice as deep in places, indicating a violent tectonic history.

"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," Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team said in a statement, adding the team "couldn't be more delighted with what we see."

Plains south of the canyon are noticeably younger than the large cratered regions to the north, indicating signs of wide-scale resurfacing on Charon, according to NASA researchers.

The photos are the latest to be released as New Horizons continues to send a trove of data and photos from its July 14 flyby back to Earth. With data downlinking at a rate of about 1 to 4 kilobits per second, it's expected the entire trove of science will take one year to be transmitted back to Earth.

Launched in January 2006 on a 3-billion-mile journey to Pluto, New Horizons "phoned home" after its Pluto flyby, indicating that it had successfully navigated just 7,700 miles from the dwarf planet. It later sent back the first high-resolution images of Pluto's surface.

New Horizons conserved energy by taking "naps" during the monumental trip. The spacecraft, equipped with a battery that converts radiation from decaying plutonium into electricity, may have enough power for two more decades of exploration, according to NASA.

The piano-sized probe is speeding through the Kuiper Belt, an area at the edge of the solar system encompassing Pluto and a vast area of tiny, icy worlds. After the intensive data transmission process, NASA is considering another flyby of a Kuiper belt object known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

New Horizons loses about a few watts of power each year, according to NASA, but is estimated to have as much as 20 years left in its life expectancy.
(This post was last modified: 10-04-2015 11:20 PM by GoodOwl.)
10-04-2015 11:19 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
Surprise! Pluto Has Blue Skies (Photo)
[Image: space_logo_140.jpg]SPACE.com By Mike Wall
October 8, 2015 4:44 PM

[Image: Surprise_Pluto_Has_Blue_Skies-33b186247e...23d1a93fed]
Pluto’s haze layer displays a blue color in this image obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Image released Oct. 8, 2015.

The more scientists learn about Pluto, the more interesting the dwarf planet gets.

During its historic flyby of Pluto this past July, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered towering ice mountains and vast glaciers on the frigid body. And now, flyby images recently beamed home by New Horizons reveal that the faraway dwarf planet has blue skies similar to those of Earth.

"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt?" New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement today (Oct. 8). The Kuiper Belt is the ring of icy bodies that lies beyond Neptune's orbit. "It's glorious." [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

The newly received image is the mission's first color photo of Pluto's atmosphere, team members said. (New Horizons sent home atmosphere photos shortly after the July 14 close approach, but they were all in black and white.)

The blue color comes from complex organic molecules in Pluto's atmosphere called tholins, which are themselves probably gray or red but scatter light in blue wavelengths, New Horizons team members said. The same basic phenomenon explains why Earth's sky is blue.

"That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles," mission team member Carly Howett, also of SwRI, said in the same statement. "A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules."
View gallery
Surprise! Pluto Has Blue Skies (Photo)
Regions on Pluto having exposed water ice appear in blue in this composite image from New Horizons s …

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks apart nitrogen and methane high up in Pluto's tenuous but extended atmosphere, allowing tholins and other complicated molecules to form, researchers said. The tholins eventually drift down to Pluto's surface, which explains why the dwarf planet sports a reddish-brown hue.

These tholins typically settle onto ices composed of nitrogen and other exotic substances (exotic to those with Earth-based sensibilities, at least). But some regions of exposed water-ice do exist on Pluto's surface, newly received New Horizons data reveals.

Mission scientists said they aren't sure why the water ice crops up where it does — generally, in some of the reddest areas on Pluto.

"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," said science team member Silvia Protopapa, of the University of Maryland. "We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."

New Horizons sent back a small portion of its flyby data shortly after the epic encounter but stored most of this treasure trove on board for later transmission. The spacecraft began beaming the entire data set back to mission control last month; all of it should be on the ground by the end of 2016, team members have said.

New Horizons is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth and in good health. The mission team aims to perform a flyby of a second, much smaller Kuiper Belt object in early 2019 if NASA approves and funds an extended mission for the spacecraft.
10-09-2015 08:40 PM
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OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
Sorry, I was looking for the PLATEAU thread. Looks like this is the PLUTO thread. "Never mind"

Love,
Emily L.
10-14-2015 10:01 PM
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Post: #16
RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
(10-14-2015 10:01 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Sorry, I was looking for the PLATEAU thread. Looks like this is the PLUTO thread. "Never mind"

Love,
Emily L.

Are there plateaus on Pluto?
10-15-2015 01:03 AM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
(10-15-2015 01:03 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  
(10-14-2015 10:01 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Sorry, I was looking for the PLATEAU thread. Looks like this is the PLUTO thread. "Never mind"

Love,
Emily L.

Are there plateaus on Pluto?

Ask Plato
10-15-2015 07:26 AM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
(10-14-2015 10:01 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Sorry, I was looking for the PLATEAU thread. Looks like this is the PLUTO thread. "Never mind"

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Emily L.

I'm more concerned.....
with all of the threads...
talking about conserving our Natural Race Horses!
10-15-2015 11:50 AM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
Pluto is more important than plateau.

(10-14-2015 10:01 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Sorry, I was looking for the PLATEAU thread. Looks like this is the PLUTO thread. "Never mind"

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Emily L.
10-15-2015 05:18 PM
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RE: OT: PLUTO Press Conferences- New images-explanations
'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' Collide on Pluto Moon Charon
Aug 4, 2015 03:15 PM ET // by Mike Wall, Space.com

[Image: pluto-charon-star-wars-trek-670x440-150804.jpg]
Image showing the provisional names being used by the New Horizons team for features on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. These monikers have not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" universes are coming together on Pluto's big moon Charon.

The team behind NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which performed the first-ever Pluto flyby last month, has unofficially named some Charon craters after characters from both beloved sci-fi franchises.

PHOTOS: NASA’s Mission to Pluto by the Numbers

For example, newly released maps created by the New Horizons crew reveal that Charon now has a Vader Crater, as well as impact features named after fellow "Star Wars" principals Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. And James T. Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" series, gets his own crater, as do his shipmates Mr. Spock, Sulu and Uhura. [See more photos of Pluto and its moons]

New Horizons' flyby revealed both Pluto and Charon to be complex worlds with diverse surfaces, so there are a lot of new features to name. Most of the newly announced Charon monikers are drawn from the science fiction canon; famed sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke and Octavia Butler get their own craters, for instance, and chasms on the 750-mile-wide (1,200 kilometers) moon are named after fictional spaceships, such as Nostromo from the 1979 film "Alien."

The Pluto appellations, by contrast, are generally more grounded in reality, featuring real-life explorers (though two large, dark features on the dwarf planet are named after the Balrog, a type of monster in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and Cthulhu, a god created by writer H.P. Lovecraft, respectively).

ANALYSIS: New Horizons is Seeing Signs of Kuiper Belt 'Blood Spatter'

For instance, Pluto's famous "heart" is named after Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930. Other parts of Pluto are named after pioneering space missions, including NASA's Viking, Pioneer and Voyager efforts; the Soviet Union's Venus-studying Venera program; and Hayabusa, a Japanese mission that returned pieces of an asteroid to Earth in 2010.

The large, icy plain within Tombaugh Regio ("Tombaugh Region") is called Sputnik Planum, after the famous Soviet satellite whose 1957 launch marked the birth of the space age. Other parts of the heart are named after the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, which were lost in 1986 and 2003, respectively, resulting in the death of 14 astronauts.

The New Horizons team is not just recognizing space exploration, either. Famed French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau's name now graces a Pluto cliff, and the dwarf planet's two known mountain ranges are named after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who, in 1953, became the first people ever to summit Mount Everest, Earth's tallest mountain.

The New Horizons team selected all of these monikers with help from the public — specifically, the "Our Pluto" campaign, a joint project involving NASA, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California.

People around the world suggested tens of thousands of names via the Our Pluto project during its March-April run, New Horizons team members have said.

ANALYSIS: Pluto and Charon Dazzle in New Horizons Portrait

The New Horizons team chose its favorites from this large database and submitted them to the IAU, which assigns "official" names to celestial bodies and their features. Vader Crater, Sputnik Planum, Nostromo Chasma and all the other appellations remain provisional until the IAU has approved them. (The IAU, of course, famously reclassified Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" back in 2006.)

New Horizons team members have come up with a scheme to name features on Pluto, Charon and the dwarf planet's four tiny moons (which are called Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx).

The names of Pluto's surface features are divided into six themes: space missions and spacecraft, scientists and engineers, historic explorers, underworld beings, underworlds and underworld locales, and travelers to the underworld.

Charon's craters, mountains and canyons are being named according to four themes: fictional explorers and travelers; fictional origins and destinations; fictional vessels; and exploration authors, artists and directors.

Each of the four small moons has one associated theme: deities of the night (Nix), legendary serpents and dragons (Hydra), dogs from history, literature and mythology (Kerberos) and river gods (Styx).

The maps that host all of these names will continue to come together over the next year or so. It will likely take New Horizons about 15 more months to beam its complete set of flyby images and observations back to Earth, mission officials have said.

You can learn more about the Our Pluto campaign and read more of the New Horizons team's chosen names here: http://www.ourpluto.org/pluto
(This post was last modified: 11-03-2015 05:25 PM by GoodOwl.)
11-03-2015 05:24 PM
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