The recovery attempts were quite possibly successful!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/n...-stereo-mission

There are several clear impact craters in this new image, especially to the west. This could help constrain the extent and temporal sequence of resurfacing on Pluto.

One question elakdawalla asked but was not addressed at the press conference was something I'd wondered myself - assuming Charon was formed by a giant impact, might that impact have taken place more recently than the formation of the Solar System? This could have provided a more recent heat source for both Pluto and Charon, though the timescale of tidal locking and orbit circularization doubtless sets a lower bound on the age of the current Pluto system.

There are some spectacular features here, and if the July 3rd images are anything to go by tomorrow's pictures may be more striking still. It's still early, but I'm starting to wish this were the hemisphere illuminated at closest approach.

Here is another version of Habukaz's visualization of upcoming imagery, including RC2.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529476,00.html

As the article notes, would be timely for the anniversary.

Actually, this is not how gravity assists work - rather, they take advantage of an orbiting body's orbital motion relative to background space. Say a planet is orbiting with a speed V relative to the sun and a spacecraft approaches it (from the planet's point of view) from one side with a speed v. From the planet's perspective, the spacecraft ought to have the same relative magnitude of speed leaving it as approaching it, so the spacecraft leaves with speed v too. From, say, the Sun's point of view, though, the spacecraft approached the planet (which was moving at speed V) with some other speed z; by the time the spacecraft has left the vicinity of the planet, the planet has "dragged it along," and some significant fraction of the planet's orbital speed V is added to the original spacecraft velocity. (This can also be used to decelerate the spacecraft, too, by setting up the initial encounter differently.) The bottom line is that gravity assists depend on the mass and orbital velocity of the "assisting" body alone (robbing it of orbital, not rotational momentum), and have nothing to do with its rotation rate.

Also regarding image attachments, it seems like many of them cannot be viewed without logging in - though this might just be me.

I hope it hasn't been through the rings that many times yet...

Probably my favorite author... I thought "Ring," "Evolution," and "Vacuum Diagrams" were among his best.

Two, actually, but who's counting?

Just wondering (not sure if this is a stupid question), has Cassini seen any specular reflections from the lakes yet, and if not, when might it be in a position to do so? Thanks!

For the record, Huygens was not sterilized in the first place, so possible contamination of Titan probably isn't much of an issue at this point. As for contaminating Enceladus - well, if they were unwilling to have Galileo impact onto Europa (complete with several km-thick ice layer and intense sterilizing radiation), risking a crash in a warm geyser is probably out of the question...

According to the ESA, the impact took place according to schedule.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMBY5BVLRE_0.html

Not quite on the Moon, but interesting nonetheless!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/science/...tml?ref=science

This doesn't make sense to me. If, for the sake of argument, the Earth were in a 44-day orbit, would the warmest day fall at the winter solstice 22 days later? Further, I think not much thermal inertia may be required to account for the Plutonian warming - with temperature differentials between seasons smaller and seasons longer than on Earth, a lesser thermal inertia could account for the effect. Also, nitrogen sublimation into the atmosphere is a cooling effect around perihelion... perhaps this cooling weakens as more polar nitrogen ices are consumed, helping to account for the warming?

Actually, the orbital inclination is irrelevant - what matters is the tilt of the planet's rotation axis with respect to the plane of its orbit. Because Mercury's axial tilt is a miniscule 0.01 degrees, the sun will hardly be seen to move above or below the ecliptic at any point in the year. Any "seasons," then, will be due to the eccentricity of its orbit.

And, interestingly enough, even Mercury's weak magnetic field is enough to deflect the solar wind (at least, most of the time).

Just a few thoughts.

Sure, 1,000,000 mph is a bit fast, but the article actually says 100,000 mph. After conversion for kilometers and seconds, this comes out to about 17 km/sec – just what http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ gives as a typical Earth impact velocity for asteroids.

A few years, maybe, but Google is apparently planning for the future today :

"Google has now plans to create similar sites for other major planets for which information is available. It has obtained domain names like Google Mercury, Google Venus and Google Jupiter."

No planet is safe!

Aaaand it's gone! Half an hour to wait...

AP News has confirmed it.... http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/3697747.html

It's all very nice seeing a few hundred meters of rock floating in the void (Hayabusa), but oh, what I wouldn't give to see a mini-world in its own right...

And for those of us (Java-blessed) who like the spinning ellipses, we can always scroll down to "Trajectory Simulation" at http://www.inspacepropulsion.com/teachers/fun.html and see the animations...

According to it, though, New Horizons will be the second probe to reach Pluto - after Voyager 1 did the same in 1986. Parallel-universe Voyager, anyone?

The size comparison points are valid, and of course surface area, rather than volume, is the relevant statistic when seeking to do anything with the surface (pin down a vent location, search for a possible landing site, et cetera). Still, keep in mind that according to these standards, Cassini's original picture on the thread is a bad comparison - nowhere does it show relative areas!
Because of the negative reaction to the "comparing a two-dimensional plane to a three-dimensional object," I decided that this time I'd show both as three-dimensional objects (well, as best one can on a flat screen). This way, they'll be equally misrepresented!

Yep, I remember this composite of Britain and Enceladus from a while back:

Not all that big, really!

Whatever it is, it's a jiggled-up, overexposed version of this. Not quite as weird, but the instrument pointing logs would be of great utility here.