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- Our New Horizon spacecraft visited the dwarf planet Pluto on July 14, 2015. It was a flyby mission. Measurements lasted for several months and it will take over a year to download all the new data. It takes a signal 4.6 hours to reach us and the 12 watt transmitter is transmitting at only 2,000 bits per second.
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- Pluto was bigger and stranger than all the astronomers expected. We had Pluto’s diameter at 1,467 miles. New measurements put the width at 1,473 miles which is 30% smaller than our Moon, (2,152 miles).
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- See Review #1724 to learn more about the New Horizon mission itself. It was launched in 2006 at 35,880 miles per hour and it took 9 years to reach Pluto.. The flyby skimmed the surface just 7,770 miles altitude.
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- Astronomers from afar expected Pluto’s surface to be a frozen, cratered and totally dead as a planet. What they discovered was a young surface with smooth frozen plains and icy mountains as high as our Rockies. There were dunes, glacial lakes and ice that has recently flowed. Smooth surfaces were estimated to be only 100 million years old on top of regions the were billions of years old.
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- Something internal has warmed the planet to create these unexpected features.
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- Pluto has a rich atmosphere that extends 80 miles above its surface. Wisps of nitrogen atmosphere could be detected 1,000 miles above the surface.
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- Pluto has 5 moons, Charon, Styx Nix Hydra and Kerberos. Charon is 751 miles in diameter. The other 4 are only a few dozen miles in diameter.
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- Pluto was recently designated as a “ Dwarf Planet” not belonging to the other 8 planets in our Solar System. Pluto then became a member of the Kuiper Belt of objects. The next larger Kuiper Belt object so far discovered is Eris with a diameter of 1,445 miles.
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- Pluto has a calculated density of 1.86 grams per cubic centimeter which means it is about 60% rock and 40% ice in composition. Pluto’s atmospheric pressure is only 0.001% that of the pressure at sea level on Earth.
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- Pluto’s surface is many times more complex than astronomers expected. There are canyons, polar caps, broad equatorial dark plains, ice mountains, ice plains, craters and glaciers. There are convections on the icy plains that indicate an unknown source of heat inside the planet. There are clear signs of ice flows down the mountains likely due to the presence of liquid nitrogen. Pluto’s gravity is only 6% that of Earth’s.
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- As of August 2015 95% of the measurement data is still on the spacecraft. It takes a long time to download at 2,000 bits per second.
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- Other Reviews available about Pluto written before the New Horizon visit:
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- #1724 - New Horizon spacecraft weighs 934 pounds carrying 7 measurement instruments including a 8.2 inch telescope. Camera resolution is to 70 meters per pixel up to 65,000 pixels.
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- #1632 Astronomers have found over 1,000 “ dwarf planet size” objects in the Kuiper Belt. Pluto orbit’s the Sun twice for every 3 times Neptune orbits the Sun. One orbit takes 248 years. Pluto’s average temperature is -380 F.
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- #1727 - Pluto and Charon - this review shows how the flyby measurements were used to calculate the mass of the planet and the moons. (math)
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- #1129 - Reasons why Pluto was kicked out of the Solar System. (politics)
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