KBO encounters |
KBO encounters |
Aug 2 2008, 12:53 PM
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#201
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 6 Joined: 1-August 08 Member No.: 4280 |
Hi,
I’m regular follower of NH and I’m also interested in the 2nd leg of the mission, i.e the 2016+ KBOs encounters. Does anyone know when operations about this leg (starting with searching objects of interest with HST or some other earth-based means, I suppose) are expected to begin ? |
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Aug 20 2015, 03:13 PM
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#202
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
Well, NH is slowing down the further it goes, but probably not enough to compensate for the reduced sunlight available. I don't expect the pictures to be any worse than Charon. A similar closest distance as at Pluto gets us pictures a ~125 pixels across, with ~400m/pixel resolution, which should be good for learning some morphology.
My bet is that we will be surprised at the lack of craters. If these are primordial bodies, they grew by accreting nearby materials at a slow speed, like the ~basketball sized bodies seen in the walls of Rosetta's comet. The surface at a small scale with be lumpy/hummocky, with a couple of larger "mountain" areas where they gathered another small planetoid. I'm thinking something like Calypso/Helene, but not as smooth as Telesto or Methone. -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Aug 20 2015, 04:57 PM
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#203
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Member Group: Members Posts: 137 Joined: 16-June 15 Member No.: 7507 |
The issue is not about how they formed, but what's been happening to them since. We have every reason to think that there should have been plenty of collisions since accretion.
As far as energy goes, there's not only potential energy imparting from impacts, but also from having their orbits changed, either rapidly or slowly with time. Obviously there should be no relevant internal heat for such a small body. If a lot of the topography we see on Pluto and Charon is due to subsidence after nitrogen loss, then we might expect to see the same from smaller KBOs, albeit I would certainly expect any such processes to have long ago finished, and the much lower gravity would limit the ability for the body to become compacted (they're not in hydrostatic equilibrium). On the other hand, any topography coming from thermal expansion and contraction as the object grows nearer and further from the sun during its orbit would still happen on a smaller body today. Even without having visited them, we know that there's a good bit of variety in KBOs, at least in terms of color and albedo. The presence or absence of moons may also lead to unique properties. And also, depending on where their orbits are, this may change the boiling/melting points, viscosities, etc of various substances on them. So while the Pluto-Charon system was clearly the star of the show, I'm still pretty excited to see what any future flyby - or flybies, plural - might reveal. |
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