NEW HORIZONS FAQ and LINKS, Useful documents, links and references Options

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PLEASE READ
The New Horizons encounter with Pluto and its system of moons is a moment in space exploration history that all of us want to enjoy and share in the excitement. This includes all of the Forum Administrators and Moderators.

As we did with other mission sections, we have tried to bring together a range of resources and frequently asked questions that members and guests can use to learn more about the mission.

As everyone knows, UMSF endeavours to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio. We want to encourage everyone to find a way to 'contribute' to the discussion and make sure that we don't clutter the threads with unnecessary quoting, questions and endless repeats of answers.

In the following pages we are going to try and compile a lot of the frequently asked questions, plus provide links to the abundant documents, references and websites that are available on the mission.

The administrators and moderators know that there will be a lot of interest and inevitable speculation about images and the science being received from New Horizons - armchair exploration is what this Forum is known for - but we want to ensure that the information being posted is of the highest standards.

Your positive contributions and support to the Forum during this busy and exciting time will ensure that we all can ride along through the Pluto system and travel to our own 'new horizons'.

IMPORTANT NOTE
The administrators and moderators will be keeping an extra close-eye on the discussion and will, if necessary, make some tough calls on comments and posts if we think they are breaching the rules or are adding to the 'noise' in any way. We will not hesitate to delete posts, close topics, warn or suspend members for obvious breaches.

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HANDY TIPS
If you have a specific question or want clarification on something, then we highly recommend trying all these tips before asking it in the open Forum:

1) GOOGLE YOUR QUESTION FIRST !
Too often people don't bother making this easy first step.
Try phrasing your question in a few words or just use some key words related to your query.
Even just typing your question in, for example: "How fast is New Horizons going", will result in a number of website references to look at.
PRO TIP: Look further than the page one results. Check several of the results offered. If you don't get the answer, try some other words/phrases first.

2) GO TO THE MISSION WEBSITE
If Google'ing your question didn't help or the results didn't already take you there, then go and take a good look at the New Horizons website/s. There are plenty of pages with useful details and links to various references.
New Horizons has its own website hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), and NASA also has a special website for the mission.
PRO TIP: Use the NASA website search function. Use Google to search the website by entering site: before the url and your query eg: site:pluto.jhuapl.edu how fast is new horizons going.

3) READ THROUGH THE THREAD THAT'S MOST RELEVANT
Members on this Forum have been talking about the New Horizons mission for over 10 years and a lot of information has accumulated over that time.
To avoid asking questions that have been asked over and over again, take the time to read back through the various topics and you'll most likely find the answer you were looking for.
PRO TIP: UMSF has a search capability or you can use Google to search the Forum as noted above.

IF AT THIS POINT YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR ANSWER, THEN:
i) Check all the FAQs and References in the following pages
ii) Send a Private Message to an Administrator or Moderator
iii) If all else fails, post a question to the most appropriate thread

Remember that UMSF is about contributing information. We are fortunate to have a number of very knowledgeable members who will undoubtedly share everything they can about the mission.
We are also very fortunate to have several New Horizons team members - most notably the mission's Principal Investigator, Alan Stern - following and posting here. While they are often happy to give their input, they are not here to answer questions or support us (indeed they most likely will not have time). Rather we are here to support them and show/share our interest in their mission.

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NEW HORIZONS FAQs and USEFUL WEBSITES

Q: Where are the best places to find information on the New Horizons mission?
Mission websites: JHU/APL website | NASA website
New Horizons news: JHU/APL mission News Center | NASA mission news | Planetary Society
New Horizons FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions page
Social media: Twitter - @NewHorizons2015 | @NASANewHorizons | @AlanStern | Facebook
Wikipedia: New Horizons page (lots of references to articles etc)
Other sources: (pdf): NH Flyby Press Kit | NH Fact Sheets (1) (2)
Video Archive: Youtube | Pluto Solar System Videos
App: Pluto Safari
NASA's Pluto Flyby Toolkit: website with lots of links and resources

Q: Where can I find the raw images being returned by New Horizons' LORRI camera?
LORRI Raw Images: New Horizons LORRI raw image release page at APL

NEW! Emily with the help of member 'grythumn', has put together a handy page with the LORRI images.

Q: Where can I see processed images?
Obviously members of UMSF will be madly creating image products and posting them in the New Horizons thread. While great work is done here, by their own admission, members push the images to the 'pixel' stacking and deconvolution limits.
The mission team will be releasing their own processed images from internal sources and making them available through the mission and NASA websites.
New Horizons: JHU/APL website | NASA website
The Planetary Society is also compiling a page of the best images and products:
Planetary Society - New Horizons image archive

Q: Where is the New Horizons spacecraft?
Mission website: Where is New Horizons? page
Eyes on Pluto: Excellent browser-based flyby simulation
Eyes on the Solar System: If you haven't done so already, download the browser-based program
Pluto Safari App/Browser: New Horizons Location page

Q: What can we expect to happen during the Pluto encounter?
Emily Lakdawalla has compiled an excellent blog with lots of information on the encounter sequence - here
Also, Emily has a great list of the expected pixels/resolutions that images of Pluto and its moons may been seen at - here
Here's another useful blog with details on the flyby sequence - here

Q: What is the downlink rate for data from New Horizons?
Downlink Rate: The average downlink rate after New Horizons passes Pluto (and sends the bulk of its encounter data back to Earth) is approximately 2,000 bits per second, a rate the spacecraft achieves by downlinking with both of its transmitters through NASA's largest antennas. Even then, it will take until late 2016 to bring down all the encounter data stored on the spacecraft's recorders.

Q: Will there be any broadcasts of the encounter?
NASA is providing several broadcasts through its television channel/online service: NASA TV
NASA TV has released a schedule of planned broadcasts: Schedule pdf

Q: Where can I find more information on the New Horizons spacecraft?
Southwest Research Institute: spacecraft notes pdf

Q: How can I find out which of NASA's Deep Space Network stations are tracking New Horizons?
You can see which DSN site is tracking New Horizons (designation NHPC) on the browser-based - DSN Now

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INSTRUMENTS

OVERVIEW
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.4261.pdf

TECH SPECS
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Spacecraft...cifications.php

RALPH
www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-ralph.pdf
http://www.ballaerospace.com/file/media/D3...alph_0315_2.pdf
http://www.ballaerospace.com/page.jsp?page=332
http://www.ballaerospace.com/page.jsp?page=325
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=65

ALICE
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=125

SWAP
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=565

LORRI
www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-lorri.pdf

REX
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-rex.pdf

Student Dust Collector
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-sdc.pdf

PEPSSI
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.4428.pdf

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Emily at the Planetary Society has a bunch of useful facts worth listing here:
• Through July 12, New Horizons will take regular LORRI photos of Pluto, Charon, Nix, and Hydra, which will mostly be returned soon after acquisition because they are used for optical navigation.
• Pluto will appear larger than the LORRI field of view for less than 24 hours around closest approach.
• Since Pluto and Charon rotate slowly (once every 6.4 days), all of the best fully-lit images will show the same hemisphere. The other hemisphere will be imaged at a best resolution of about 38 kilometers per pixel, 3.2 days prior to closest approach.
• Pluto's axis is highly tilted, like Uranus, and it is currently summer in the northern hemisphere. All approach images will contain the sunlit north poles of Pluto and its satellites.
• There are few data downlinks near closest approach, so we will not receive many images in real time. But the ones we get will be great.
• The mission has promised to release LORRI images (higher-resolution, black-and-white) in near-real-time, but not MVIC (lower-resolution, color) images.
• Only 1% of the science data from the flyby will be returned to Earth during the period around closest approach, including images that the mission has selected for their high science value as well as high public interest. They will be releasing captioned and processed versions as fast as their small team can manage.
• The rest of the image data will be downlinked beginning in September, about 2 months after encounter. It will take 10 weeks to download the full data set.

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MISSION TIMELINE AND REAL-TIME SIMULATION

Daniel Muller has created and updated another great timeline simulator for New Horizons.

http://dmuller.net/spaceflight/realtime.ph...ion=newhorizons

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INDEX OF LORRI FILE DATA

Emily has dug a little deeper and found this handy reference of LORRI camera text files.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounte...evel1/lor/info/
EDIT: Link corrected




Machi (Daniel) created a document showing the Date/Time/Target/Instrument/Distance/Pixel Resolution and Observations for the LORRI/RALPH instruments.  FlybyLORRIv0.8.pdf ( 56.57K ) Number of downloads: 2422

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NASA TV COVERAGE AND MEDIA ACTIVITIES

Updated here on 8 Jul. All times are US Eastern Daylight (GMT -4).

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RECORDED MEDIA EVENTS

The links below are from the NASA Youtube page. There are also versions on the Space Multimedia video update page.

July 14th - New Horizons Mission Update (AM) - ~42mins
July 14th - New Horizons Mission Update (PM) - ~42mins
July 14th - New Horizons Arrives at Pluto - ~28mins
July 15th - Seeing Pluto in a New Light - ~61mins
July 17th - NASA News Conference on the New Horizons Mission - ~55mins
July 24th - (Key excerpts) NASA's New Horizons Team Discusses New Science Findings on Pluto - ~6mins
July 24th - (Full) NASA's New Horizons Team Reveals New Scientific Findings on Pluto - ~68mins