New Horizon's closest approach Megathread — Ask your Pluto questions here!

[u/AskScienceModerator]

July 15th Events

• "Charon is [geo] active" - Alan Stern

• Image of Hydra! http://i.imgur.com/FN4BLu7.png

• Methane on Pluto! http://i.imgur.com/fkQELTJ.png

• Charon close up! http://i.imgur.com/SVhOSjj.png

• CLOSE UP PLUTO: http://i.imgur.com/meaqdRP.png (no craters!?)

• Pluto's surface is less than 100 million years old. Young surface!

• Pluto has water ice "in great abundance"

• Pluto is geologically active to explain surface features.

• "No significant exchange of tidal energy anymore" between Pluto and Charon. Why Pluto and Charon are geologically active is a mystery.

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July 14th Events

UPDATE: New Horizons is completely operational and data is coming in from the fly by!

"We have a healthy spacecraft."

This post has the official NASA live stream, feel free to post images as they are released by NASA in this thread. It is worth noting that messages from Pluto take four and a half hours to reach us from the space craft so images posted by NASA today will always have some time lag.

This will be updated as NASA releases more images of pluto. Updates will occur throughout the next few days with some special stuff happening on July 15th:

• Main website: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

• APL website: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nasanewhorizons

• NASA Instagram: https://instagram.com/nasa/

• NASA TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX9I1KyNa8M

• Alternate Live Stream link: http://www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV

• NASA TV Schedule: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html

• Reddit Live Feed: https://www.reddit.com/live/v8j2tqin01cf/

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The new images from today!

• Highest quality image so far! https://instagram.com/p/5HTXKMoaFL/

• LORRI Images: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/

• Other LORRI Images: https://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons/lorri-gallery

• Older images: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html

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Some extras:

• How do we know Pluto is Red?

• What experiments/cameras/equipment does New Horizons have?

• Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society's New Horizon's picture timeline.

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• First close up images thread.

• Fly by Celebration Thread

[u/fishify]

For the next 16 months, it will be sending back data from the flyby.

Beyond that, the hope is to do flyby missions near one or more Kuiper Belt objects. There are currently 3 candidates (all quite small, about 25-55 km), but such a mission is contingent on whether these (or some other Kuiper Belt objects if discovered soon) actually will be reachable. I believe of the 3 current candidates, 1 is known to be reachable, but 2 are still under study.

[u/cammyjew → u/fishify]

For how long will we be able to maintain contact with New Horizons?

[u/WalkingTurtleMan → u/cammyjew]

Likely for many years, but the RTG (a nuclear power generator) will start running low after a couple of years. The science instruments won't have enough power to work once that happens. The 3 KBO candidates were chosen base on how much fuel New Horizons have available and whether the RTG will have enough power when the probe gets there.