Visiting Pluto, My 9th Planet.

-  1724  -  Visiting Pluto, My 9th Planet.  New Horizon spacecraft does a fly-by these next few months. 7 instruments collect years worth of data.  Then on to the Kuiper Belt.
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----------------- -  1724  -  Visiting Pluto, My 9th Planet
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-  Pluto, my 9th planet.  I refuse to accept his “planet” demotion.  A spacecraft, New Horizons, is visiting Pluto and its moon, Charon, this month, January, 2015.  The flyby continues to its closest on July 14, it will skim the surface of Pluto by 7,770 miles.  At that point the spacecraft will be 3,000,000,000 miles away.  Charon is a  moon half the size of Pluto.  They are in tidal lock orbiting each other.
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-  The flight has taken 9 years, launched January 19, 2006, leaving Earth at 35,800 miles per hour.  The spacecraft is going to fly-by taking several months of instrument data.  It will be going too fast to slow down, there is not enough fuel left on board for that.  After Pluto it flies into the Kuiper Belt to encounter  other KBO’s in its mission of exploration.
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-  New Horizon weighs 943 pounds, almost ½ ton.  A generator on board produces 200 watts of power for seven measurement instruments.  A camera on an 8.2 inch telescope, a spectrometer, the camera operating in both the visible and the infrared, a plasma spectrometer to measure charged particles, a temperature radio sensor, and a dust collector.
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-  These seven instruments consume less power than a 30 watt light bulb.  The camera has 65,000 pixels with two resolutions 650 meters per pixel, and up to 70 meters per pixel for high resolution.
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-  Data is transmitted using a 12 watt transmitter at 2,000 pits per second.  The entire down link will take over a year ending in 2016.  New Horizon will have entered the Kuiper Belt by then.  It intends to pass by two more  KBO’s one in December, 2018 and another in March ,2019
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Other reviews on Pluto:
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-  #1632  Pluto and the Kuiper Belt Dwarf Planets.  There are over 1,000 KBO’s, including Pluto and its moon, Charon.  Names like:  Sedna, Eris, Haumea, Quaoar, Orcus, Salacia, Makemake
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-   # 1364  Pluto and Charon.  Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the Sun.  Its orbit is elliptical, event bringing it inside Neptune’s orbit form 1979 to 1999.  Pluto rotates in 6.4 days.  Pluto  is a rocky core surrounded by an icy mantle.
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-  #  1129  Why Pluto is a KBO not a Planet?
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-  #685 written  8-27-2006, soon very outdated.
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