New Horizons, Pluto and the Kuiper belt Options

[nprev]

Good stuff as always, Alan; thanks! You guys are staying pretty busy!

[MahFL]

I always enjoy his updates. You get the sense that as each year passes they will get busier and busier.

[Greg Hullender]

I'm curious what sort of useful data can actually be collected for these tiny moons.

--Greg

[ugordan]

Some surface detail, albedo measurements, accurate dimensions and some very crude spectral data. Not bad for something that didn't even "exist" several months ago...

[JohnVV]

I'm curious what sort of useful data can actually be collected for these tiny moons.

just enough information, so far, to tickle the fancy of artists .

YT vid.
http://youtu.be/oQSSr1anEf8

the Wikipedia page seams to be accurate
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w.../Moons_of_Pluto
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/S/2011_P_1

[Alan Stern]

I think for the best of the small moon's, we'll get imagery down to ~1 km resolution. So we will have gross morphology; with colors at cruder resolution (5-6x cruder) and hemispheric spectra. Plus shape, phase curve, and orbits, plus a look for associated rings in forward scattering.

Alan

[Greg Hullender]

Thanks, Alan. That's a lot better than what I had thought was possible.

Just four more years to go . . .

--Greg

[brellis]

Might we find some atmospheric exchange among the members of the Pluto system, like we're seeing with Enceladus?

[nprev]

I'd definitely bet on it happening between Pluto & Charon.

[Fran Ontanaya]

Maybe the barycenter is a snowball factory. Where could a chunk of ice go from there?

[Paolo]

Might we find some atmospheric exchange among the members of the Pluto system, like we're seeing with Enceladus?

this has been discussed here: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6947

[Paolo]

today's New Horizon tweet mentions the "Safe Haven Bail Out Trajectory" (SHBOT) that shifts the "encounter point to a place rings can't be"
any more info? where would be the encounter point in that case? at which distance from Pluto? and why would it be safe? rings would be instable at that distance?

[elakdawalla]

It has to do with the new moon discoveries they're making (it's an open secret that there's likely a couple more in the system beyond the four known -- Alan et al just won more Hubble time to confirm or deny this). They're not worried about New Horizons hitting an undiscovered moon -- that's a vanishingly small probablility. The worry is that there might be a lot of unseeable dust and larger-sized particles whirling around among all those moons because of small impacts tossing ejecta into what new modeling studies are showing would be fairly stable orbits around Pluto. So this new trajectory would take New Horizons farther from Pluto at closest approach, to avoid the region where a dust hazard may exist. I mentioned this in passing here. I think they will be able to optionally select the SHBOT after they begin long-range Pluto observations -- they'll use some of their approach observations to search for rings and moons and plug those in to their models to assess the hazard.

[nprev]

Oy vey. So they're gonna have to plan out a complete alternative encounter???

I'm finally glad that NH needed 9 yrs. to get to Pluto....here we are at T minus >4 already, and there's clearly considerable work to be done.

But at the same time, you gotta just kick back, smile, and say: Science!!!

It's utterly marvelous how rapidly observational astronomy is advancing in leaps & bounds as well as our understanding of things like moon & ring systems, and all that is increasingly aiding UMSF.

[Alan Stern]

Nprev-

SHBOT will be planned in detail in 2012. Most of the encounter is almost identical, deviating primarily in the use of MVIC for OpNav (long story); the hours around closest approach will differ more significantly owing to the different (and still TBD) SHBOT aim point. So while it's a bunch of work, it's not as complex as planning the nominal encounter, most of which can be mapped onto SHBOT.

-Alan