In this episode of Our Island Universe, we anticipate the arrival of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and new discoveries at the edge of our solar system.
Learn more about NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, arriving in orbit July 14, 2015.
Shanil Virani, Director of the John C. Wells Planetarium in Harrisonburg, VA.
Follow on Twitter as shanilv
Transcript:
In the summer of 1964, a young engineer — Gary Flandro, working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — discovered a rare alignment of the outer planets that would allow for a “planetary grand tour”. This alignment, which occurs once every 175 years, would occur in the late 1970s and make it possible to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and yes, Pluto. By taking advantage of the gravity-assist of the large gas giants, a multi-planet mission could make the trip in about 10 years rather than 40 years! In that discovery was born the epic Voyager explorer program that would rewrite our astronomy textbooks and provide us with unprecedented views of the outer worlds of the Solar System.
However, limited funding resulted in changes to the program with the consequence that one planet would be dropped from the “Planetary Grand Tour” — yes, Pluto. At 10:49am on July 14, that will change when NASA’s New Horizons makes it closest approach to the ice world! After traveling 10 years and 3 billion miles later, New Horizons will be less than 8,000 miles from the Pluto system! What will the high resolution, detailed camera and the other scientific instruments reveal? The spacecraft will look for ultraviolet emissions from Pluto's atmosphere, methane frost on the surface, and reveal the surface composition! But in every mission, there are always unanticipated discoveries that turn out to be the most exciting. At its closest approach, the best pictures of Pluto will depict surface features as small as 200 feet across. I cannot wait to see what it looks like and the great discoveries that we’ll make!
It has taken us 50 years but we’ll finally have a family portrait of our Solar System.