Saturday, July 11, 2015

Saturday in Space - Pluto and New Horizons

Well, it's been a crazy couple of weeks with lots of articles and videos and photos and graphics of Pluto dominating the Space News outlets.  Allow me to follow in this trend and highlight just some of what has been transpiring and being passed along to us as we close in on the arrival of the New Horizons space craft to a near-orbit of the furthest planet in our solar system.  Let's start this blog post with some factual information and teasers for the mission to come.


On March 30th, Space.com shared an excellent infographic of which the above picture is just a portion.  Check out "How NASA's New Horizons Mission to Pluto Works (Infographic)" here.  On July 3rd, nationalgeographic.com informed us that "Scientists in Flying Telescope Race to Intercept Pluto’s Shadow" here.  By July 8th, from Space.com we received news that "Pluto's 'Heart' Spied by New Horizons Spacecraft (Photo)" here.  And on July 10th, from astronomynow.com, "Pluto probe provides appetiser for next week’s flyby" here.


But it wasn't all smooth sailing, as most of us know, because on July 5th, the news services were blowing up with information of the previous day's troubling New Horizons shutdown.  A couple of the stories included "Technical problem pauses Pluto probe’s science operations" from astronomynow.com here and "NASA's New Horizons probe suffers anomaly" from "unexplained-mysteries.com" here.  Fortunately, by later in the day from NASA.com we found out that "NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations" here.


As we draw closer to July 14th and the flyby, speculation abounds.  From nationalgeographic.com we got "Three Possible Plutos" here.  Other reports, like the one from astronomynow.com, were a bit more pragmatic, explaining "How to find Pluto around the time of its historic encounter with New Horizons" here.  Finlly, to close out this anticipatory blog post, from space.com, let's stay hopeful and watch for the "'Mission Pluto' Documentary to Premiere Next Week (Exclusive Video)."  More information on that can be found here and for "Complete Coverage," bookmark this link here.   Enjoy the big show next week!

Saturday in Space on GRYMVALD.com
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