А теперь к Плутону (АМС New Horizons / Новые горизонты)

[Чебурашка]

Потому что тело выглядит практически одинаково со всех сторон. Вариации яркости минимальны. И без разницы с какой стороны его NH сфотогрофирует.

[Chilik]

Чебурашка пишет:
Вариации яркости минимальны. 

Это не значит, что там нет рельефа или отсутствуют цветные пятна. Вопрос в пространственных размерах асимметрии или образований, которые нынешними методами не видны.

[hlynin]

Да ладно, надо убедиться, что оно круглое (или нет) и лететь дальше

[nsn]

Pirat5 пишет:
Почему?

Поскольку не удалось обнаружить никаких вариаций (неважно, по какой причине), менять время пролёта бесполезно: просто неизвестно ни о каких периодических особенностях, ради наблюдения которых это имело бы смысл.

[tnt22]

Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 41 мин. назад

New Horizons might get more flyby targets; Pluto features get official names - https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/09/new-horizons-flyby-targets-pluto-official-names/ ... - by @CwG_NSF (Render: @kogavfx )

New Horizons might get more flyby targets; Pluto features get official names

[che wi]

NASA предложило энтузиастам выбрать имя для новой цели New Horizons
https://nplus1.ru/news/2017/11/07/nasa-seeks-name

[tnt22]

Pluto's mysteries

European Space Agency, ESA

Опубликовано: 9 нояб. 2017 г.

European scientists are learning more about Pluto's mysteries from NASA's New Horizons mission, even as the spacecraft continues its summer hibernation. Data sent back from the spacecraft reveals a dynamic planet filled with unusual features that are helping scientists understand this unusually dynamic and icy world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz_okHXxkn4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz_okHXxkn4 (3:13)

[Theoristos]

Chilik пишет:

Чебурашка пишет:
Вариации яркости минимальны.

Это не значит, что там нет рельефа или отсутствуют цветные пятна. Вопрос в пространственных размерах асимметрии или образований, которые нынешними методами не видны.

Видимо, это означает невозможность выбрать наиболее интересную ориентацию тела.

[che wi]

NewHorizons2015‏ @NewHorizons2015 · 19m

NEW 2014 MU69 name nominations like Tiramisu, Farpoint, Olympus, and Lewis & Clark available to vote on!! ...Just days left to name our flyby target! http://www.frontierworlds.org/vote 

[tnt22]

https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/2017/12/06/the-pis-perspective-wrapping-up-2017-en-route-to-our-next-flyby/

ptalbert
Posted on December 6, 2017

The PI's Perspective: Wrapping up 2017 En Route to Our Next Flyby


New Horizons will fly by its next exploration target, a distant Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019. Credit: Roman Tkachenko

New Horizons is in good health and cruising closer each day to its next encounter: a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) 2014 MU69 (or "MU69" for short). If you follow our mission, you likely know that flyby will occur on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 2019, which is just barely over a year fr om now!

Спойлер

As I write this, New Horizons is wrapping up an active period that began when the spacecraft emerged from hibernation mode in September. But soon, on Dec. 21, we'll put the spacecraft back in hibernation, wh ere it will remain until June 4, 2018. After June 4 the spacecraft will stay "awake" until late in 2020, long after the MU69 flyby, when all of the data from that flyby have reached Earth.

But before we put New Horizons into hibernation this month, we have some important work ahead. We'll observe five more KBOs with the onboard LORRI telescope/imager to learn about their surface properties, satellite systems and rotation periods. This work is part of a larger set of observations of 25-35 Kuiper Belt objects from 2016 to 2020 on this extended mission. Learning about these KBOs from close range and at angles that we cannot observe from Earth makes will give us key context for the more detailed studies we'll make of MU69 from a thousand times closer than we can study any other KBO. In addition to that LORRI imaging of these objects, we're continuing our nearly round-the-clock observations of the charged particle and dust environment of the Kuiper Belt—both before and while New Horizons hibernates.

Also right ahead is a 2.5-minute engine burn planned for Dec. 9 (yes, a Saturday). This maneuver will both refine our course and optimize our flyby arrival time at MU69, by setting closest approach to 5:33 Universal Time (12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) on Jan. 1, 2019. Flying by at that time provides better visibility by the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network, which will attempt to reflect radar waves off the surface of MU69 for New Horizons to receive. If it succeeds, that difficult experiment will help us determine the surface reflectivity and roughness of MU69 at radar wavelengths—something that has been successfully applied to study asteroids, comets, planetary satellites and even some planets, including Pluto, which New Horizons observed the same way in 2015.

Our Pluto observation set a record for the most distant object ever studied with radar —shattering the previous record by over 300 percent! If our radar experiment is successful on the much-smaller MU69 (which is perhaps 30 kilometers [19 miles] in diameter—tiny compared to Pluto's almost 2,400-kilometer [1,480-mile] diameter), then we'll break our own record, something unlikely to be surpassed for decades.

Since hibernating, New Horizons requires less attention from mission control than when we're in active operations. This will allow our mission team to focus fully on planning the detailed sequences that will tell New Horizons how to make every scientific observation of MU69 during its close-range pass in the days surrounding Jan. 1, 2019.


MU69 flyby planning meetings, like this small one recently held in at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, are well under way. Credit: Alan Stern/SwRI

The year ahead will also include many observations of other KBOs, more study of the Sun's heliosphere with our dust and plasma instruments — SDC, PEPSSI, and SWAP, and our Alice ultraviolet spectrometer — as well as all the remaining flyby planning for MU69.

MU69 flyby operations will begin with distant navigation imaging to help us accurately home in on our target; that work will start in late August or September and will continue until literally 48 hours before flyby. Our navigation teams at KinetX and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab JPL will use those navigation images to compute the engine burns to further refine our course toward our planned closest approach point just 3,500 kilometers, or about 2,175 miles, from MU69. That's more than three times as close as we flew by Pluto, which should make for spectacular MU69 images and other data!

Additionally, beginning in the final weeks of 2018, we'll search for moons or dust structures around MU69 that could harm New Horizons if we were to collide with them during our 32,000-miles-per-hour flyby. If hazards that threaten the spacecraft are found, we can burn our engines to divert to a farther flyby, with a closest approach of 10,000 kilometers (about 6,200 miles), which should be safer.

Well, that's my update for now. For more mission news, stay tuned to NASA websites, our own project website, and our social media channels, which are listed below so you can bookmark them.

I'll write again early next year. Until then, I hope you have a safe and productive finish to 2017, a happy new year, and that you'll keep on exploring—just as we do!

-Alan Stern

There are many ways to follow New Horizons news and commentary on social media! You can find others by searching on the Web.
 • NASA's New Horizons website
 • New Horizons mission website
 • NASA New Horizons on Twitter
 • PI Alan Stern on Twitter
 • New Horizons on Facebook
 • New Horizons E-News signup

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[zandr]

И, вкратце, на русском.
https://anonsens.ru/21033_mezhplanetnaya_stanciya_nasa_skoro_vpadet_v_spyachku_space

Межпланетная станция NASA скоро "впадет в спячку"
Межпланетная станция NASA «Новые горизонты» находится в хорошем состоянии и с каждым днем становится все ближе к своей следующей цели – объекту Kuiper Belt (KBO) 2014 MU69. Встреча запланирована на канун Нового 2019 года.
Однако уже 21 декабря специалисты NASA введут корабль в спящий режим, в котором он пробудет до 4 июня 2018 года. После пробуждения космический корабль будет бодрствовать до конца 2020 года, чтобы передать данные, собранные им после встречи с MU69, на Землю. Об этом сообщил инженер миссии NASA «Новые рубежи» Алан Штерн.
Но прежде, чем станция "уйдет в спячку" в этом месяце, ей предстоит понаблюдать за пятью объектами пояса Койпера с помощью бортового тепловизора LORRI, чтобы узнать больше о свойствах их поверхности и периодах вращения в рамках миссии «Новые рубежи».
Изучение этих объектов с близкого расстояния и под разными углами позволит ученым получить данные для более подробных исследований.
Также на 9 декабря запланирована активация дополнительных двигателей для совершения маневра, который оптимизирует время прилета на MU69.
После перевода космической станции «Новые горизонты» в спящий режим, она будет требовать меньше контроля, и участники миссии смогут сконцентрироваться на составлении плана по изучению MU69, начиная с 1 января 2019 года.
Алан Штерн добавил, что в конце 2018 года исследователи приступят к поискам космических структур вокруг объекта MU69, которые могут повредить станцию «Новые горизонты» в случае столкновения с ними.

[tnt22]

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20171209

December 9, 2017

New Horizons Corrects Its Course in the Kuiper Belt

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft carried out a short, 2.5-minute engine burn on Saturday, Dec. 9 that refined its course toward 2014 MU69, the ancient Kuiper Belt object it will fly by a little more than a year fr om now.

Спойлер

The New Horizons spacecraft is about 300 million miles (483 million kilometers) from 2014 MU69, the Kuiper Belt object it will encounter on Jan. 1, 2019. Track the NASA spacecraft on its voyage. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Setting a record for the farthest spacecraft course correction to date, the engine burn also adjusted the arrival time at MU69 to optimize flyby science.

Telemetry confirming that the maneuver went as planned reached the New Horizons mission operations center around 1 p.m. EST at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, via NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) stations in Goldstone, California. The radio signals carrying the data traveled over 3.8 billion miles (6.1 billion kilometers) and took five hours and 41 minutes to reach Earth at the speed of light.

Operating by timed commands stored on its computer, New Horizons fired its thrusters for 152 seconds, adjusting its velocity by about 151 centimeters per second, a little more than three miles per hour. The maneuver both refined the course toward and optimized the flyby arrival time at MU69, by setting closest approach to 12:33 a.m. EST (5:33 UTC) on Jan. 1, 2019. The prime flyby distance is set at 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers); the timing provides better visibility for DSN's powerful antennas to reflect radar waves off the surface of MU69 for New Horizons to receive – a difficult experiment that, if it succeeds, will help scientists determine the reflectivity and roughness of MU69's surface.

Today's maneuver was the last trajectory correction during the spacecraft's long "cruise" between Pluto, which it flew past in July 2015, and the MU69 flyby. New Horizons Mission Design Lead Yanping Guo, of APL, said the next course-correction opportunity comes in October 2018, at the start of the MU69 approach phase. The mission team is using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Gaia mission to hone its aim toward MU69, which was discovered in 2014.

"We are on course and getting more excited all the time; this flyby is now barely a year away!" said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

The mission team will put the New Horizons spacecraft into hibernation mode on Dec. 21, wh ere it will stay until early next June. The spacecraft is healthy and speeding away from the Sun at 31,786 miles (51,156 kilometers) per hour, or over 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) per day.

[свернуть]

[che wi]

Новая цель зонда New Horizons может оказаться тройным астероидом

Объект Пояса Койпера 2014 MU69, куда через год доберется межпланетная станция New Horizons, возможно не просто двойной астероид, а тройная система, состоящая из тесной пары двух астероидов и одного небольшого спутника, говорится в сообщении на официальном сайте миссии.

Спойлер

New Horizons — первый космический аппарат, пролетевший рядом с Плутоном. 14 июля 2015 года он сблизился с карликовой планетой на расстояние 12,5 тысяч километров. Благодаря собранным за несколько дней данным астрономы узнали, что на Плутоне есть криовулканы, ледники, горные цепи, а также признаки подповерхностного океана. Сейчас аппарат находится на пути к своей новой цели, объекту 2014 MU69 из Пояса Койпера, к которой он прибудет 1 января 2019 года. 2014 MU69 является транснептуновым объектом из Пояса Койпера, совершающим один оборот вокруг Солнца за 295 лет. Предполагается, что он может быть ледяно-каменным телом, ранние наблюдения телескопа Hubble показали, что цвет его поверхности имеет красноватый оттенок, как у Плутона.  Предварительные оценки его размера находились в диапазоне от 20 до 40 километров.

Несмотря на то, что аппарат находится еще достаточно далеко от своей новой цели, исследователи уже сейчас пытаются узнать о ней больше, в том числе для планирования наблюдательной кампании аппарата при близком пролете мимо 2014 MU69 и коррекции его траектории. В июне-июле 2017 года, когда New Horizons находился в «спячке», была проведена масштабная кампания по наблюдениям трех событий транзита объекта 2014 MU69 по дискам далеких звезд. К наблюдениям были привлечены летающая обсерватория SOFIA, космический телескоп «Хаббл» и обсерватория Gaia, а также команда «KBO Chasers», состоявшая из астрономов и наземных мобильных телескопов. На основе полученных данных данных была произведена оценка размеров и формы объекта. Тогда астрономы решили, что имеют дело не с одиночным сферическим объектом, а либо с системой из двух тел, размером около 15-20 километров в диаметре, вращающихся вокруг общего центра масс на очень малом расстоянии друг от друга, либо с сильно вытянутым одиночным телом, размером около 30 километров в длину.

Однако теперь, вновь проанализировав данные обсерватории SOFIA по покрытию, наблюдавшемуся 10 июля 2017 года, астрономы предполагают, что дополнительный «блик» при покрытии, являющийся кратковременным падением яркости звезды, и небольшие смещения самого объекта во время покрытия, говорит о возможном наличии у 2014 MU69 небольшого спутника. В итоге новая цель аппарата New Horizons может оказаться либо двойной, либо тройной системой. Для уточнения этого предположения астрономы хотят еще раз проанализировать полученные данные и сопоставить их с данными, полученными обсерваторией Gaia.

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[tnt22]

Exotic Ice Formations Found on Pluto

NASA's Ames Research Center

Опубликовано: 26 сент. 2017 г.

NASA's New Horizons mission revolutionized our knowledge of Pluto when it flew past that distant world in July 2015. Among its many discoveries were images of strange formations resembling giant blades of ice, whose origin had remained a mystery.

Now, scientists have turned up a fascinating explanation for this "bladed terrain": the structures are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of erosion wore away their surfaces, leaving dramatic crests and sharp divides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSKQwwWehEshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSKQwwWehEs (0:58 )

[tnt22]

Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 2 ч. назад

FEATURE ARTICLE: Year In Review 2017 (Part 4): One year to New Horizons' flyby of MU69 - https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/01/yir-2017-part-4-one-year-new-horizons-flyby-mu69/ ...

- By Chris Gebhardt (@ChrisG_NSF)

(Lead Render by Nathan Koga (@kogavfx) for NSF).

Year In Review 2017 (Part 4): One year to New Horizons' flyby of MU69

written by Chris Gebhardt | January 1, 2018

[tnt22]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spend-next-new-year-s-eve-with-new-horizons

Jan. 4, 2018

Spend Next New Year's Eve with New Horizons

The New Year's celebration to usher in 2019 will include an event like no other – more than four billion miles from Earth.

Спойлер

Artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69, a Kuiper Belt object that orbits one billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, on Jan. 1, 2019.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Steve Gribben

In just under a year – shortly after midnight Eastern Time on Jan. 1, 2019 – NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will buzz by the most primitive and most distant object ever explored. New Horizons' encounter with Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, which orbits a billion miles beyond Pluto, will offer the first close-up look at such a pristine building block of the solar system – and will be performed in a region of deep space that was practically unknown just a generation ago.

"The Voyagers and Pioneers flew through the Kuiper Belt at a time when we didn't know this region existed," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at Headquarters in Washington. "New Horizons is on the hunt to understand these objects, and we invite everyone to ring in the next year with the excitement of exploring the unknown."

"Our flyby of MU69 on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 2019 will be an exciting sequel to the historic exploration New Horizons performed at Pluto in 2015," added Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "Nothing even like MU69 has ever been explored before."

As with the hundreds of thousands of other small worlds in this zone of icy bodies, MU69 is shrouded in mystery. In fact, the all we know about it has come from the Hubble Space Telescope (used to discover the object in 2014) and a comprehensive observation campaign last summer, in which the New Horizons team gathered data on MU69 as it passed in front of three stars. Those observations indicated that MU69 could be two objects, perhaps accompanied by a moon.

"That tells us this object is going to have a lot of surprises in store for New Horizons," said Marc Buie, the New Horizons science team member from SwRI who led the observation campaign. "We're going to see something that dates back to the formation of the solar system."

New Horizons will fly about three times closer to MU69 than it did to Pluto in July 2015, allowing the spacecraft's cameras to provide a more detailed look at the object's surface. Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, pointed out that New Horizons' vantage point from about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) from MU69 will allow it spot details about the size of a basketball court.


Timeline of New Horizons operations leading up to and just after the New Year's 2019 encounter with Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

"Combining images with the measurements we make of the composition of and environment around MU69, should teach us a great deal about objects like MU69 that built dwarf planets like Pluto," Weaver said.

The MU69 flyby is the centerpiece of the current New Horizons extended mission that also includes observations of more than two-dozen other Kuiper Belt objects, as well as measurements of the plasma, gas and dust environment of the Kuiper Belt. "This post-Pluto mission is a complete and comprehensive exploration of the Kuiper Belt," said Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager, also from APL. "The spacecraft is collecting data out there throughout each year while the mission team works together to plan and shape the MU69 flyby."

New Horizons is currently in hibernation until June 4. After that wake-up and a check of the spacecraft's systems and science instruments, the MU69 encounter begins in mid- August, with the first attempts at long-distance observations of MU69 that the team will use to navigate the spacecraft along the flyby path.

Learn More
The New Horizons team made dozens of discoveries in the Pluto system and looks forward to solving even more scientific mysteries at MU69. Watch the "Pluto and Charon in the Rear View, MU69 Dead Ahead off the Starboard Bow" session from the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on Dec. 11, 2017.

The New Horizons team briefed the media at the 2017 AGU Fall Meeting, covering key elements of the Kuiper Belt extended mission. Watch here


New Horizons team members discuss the Kuiper Belt Extended Mission during a media briefing at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on Dec. 12 in New Orleans.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

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Last Updated: Jan. 4, 2018
Editor: Tricia Talbert

[tnt22]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/01/06/plot-thickens-as-new-horizons-moves-within-year-of-next-flyby/

Plot thickens as New Horizons moves within year of next flyby
January 6, 2018 Stephen Clark


Artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of 2014 MU69. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben

The final days before NASA's New Horizons probe barrels in on its next destination on Jan. 1, 2019, should prove eventful, with scientists trying to sort out whether a distant mini-world detected by the Hubble Space Telescope more than three years ago may actually be a swarm of icy objects.

New Horizons' sharp-eyed camera will serve as a look-out as the spacecraft makes a speedy approach toward 2014 MU69, the official name for the mission's next target. Scientists will search for moons and icy debris, discoveries which could add intrigue to the one-shot encounter on New Year's Day 2019.

Спойлер

2014 MU69 is poised to become the most distant object ever visited, and New Horizons' science team know little about the spacecraft's next destinations, which lurks in the dark reaches of the Kuiper Belt a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto.

"Besides being the farthest exploration in the history of humankind, this flyby is also going to the most primitive and pristine object ever explored," said Alan Stern, principal investigator on the New Horizons mission fr om the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We've really never been to anything like this."

The nuclear-powered spacecraft made the first close-up exploration of Pluto and its moons in July 2015, and NASA has approved a new flight plan to fly past 2014 MU69, which scientists say is 100 times smaller than Pluto.

But new evidence suggests 2014 MU69, which NASA says will get a new nickname in the coming months, could consist of multiple objects bound together by tenuous gravity.

Using precise tracking data fr om Hubble and an upd ated star catalog provided by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, astronomers found three opportunities last June and July when 2014 MU69 would pass between the Earth and another star. On each occasion, the star's light was briefly blocked by the object's passage.

Scientists deployed an array of telescopes to Argentina and South Africa in June, but they saw nothing when they expected to see a star temporarily wink out. It turns out the astronomers put the telescopes in the wrong place.

Another chance came July 10, when the U.S.-German SOFIA airborne observatory flew to a point where 2014 MU69's shadow was projected to again blot out a star. Again, astronomers saw nothing.

But the New Horizons team hit a jackpot July 17, said Marc Buie, a co-investigator on the mission from SWRI.

"(For) just the barest brief bit of time the star winked out," Buie said in a press briefing last month at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in New Orleans. "I have to say this was very reassuring. Up to now, we're looking at a really faint little blip from Hubble, and you can wonder, 'Is this really real?' But, boy, when it blots out the star you know you've got something."

Astronomers plotted observations from dozens of telescopes, showing exactly when and for how long each telescope saw 2014 MU69 block, or occult, the light from a background star.


Scientists plotted the occultation measurements from 22 telescopes July 10, revealing an outline of 2014 MU69's expected shape. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Marc Buie

The occultations observed by each telescope varied in time and length, immediately telling Buie and his team that 2014 MU69 was not perfectly round world. The object is probably a dual-lobe world, with its two segments either orbiting one another or a contact binary stuck together "like two globs of ice cream," Buie said.

But there's more to the story.

Astronomers took a closer look at data from SOFIA's attempt July 10 to catch 2014 MU69's shadow, and the airborne telescope did see a momentary blip in the star the object was predicted to block, but not at the expected time and location.

While stressing the results are still preliminary, Buie said his team, which led last year's occultation observations, believes SOFIA saw a moonlet orbiting 2014 MU69 that has, so far, escaped detection by even the sharpest telescopes, like Hubble. The hypothesized moon also went undetected during the following ground-based campaign July 17.

"What we think is we've got a contact binary, orbiting around a common center of mass with another moon that sits out there, so now it's almost like we've got three objects in one here," Buie said.

"This is very exciting," he said. "If you ever thought why are we going to this little chunk of rock out in the middle of nowhere out in the outer solar system, this is going to have a lot of surprises. We think that this is probably a sign that the object itself was not a collisional fragment. We think it was made like this, and we really are going to see something that dates back to the birth of our solar system."

"This might be the harbinger, it might be a hint that there is actually a swarm of satellites around MU69," Stern said.

With less than a year left until New Horizons' arrival, scientists have limited time to learn more about 2014 MU69.

Buie's team has identified one more occultation opportunity, on Aug. 4, when telescopes could again be deployed to map 2014 MU69's shape, and perhaps confirm the presence of a moon.

2014 MU69 will blot out the light from a star in a swath extending from South America, across the Atlantic Ocean, into North Africa. Buie said the New Horizons science team is discussing a field campaign with partners in Colombia and Senegal, wh ere a network of mobile telescopes could be placed to try and find the shadow of 2014 MU69 and its potential moon.

After that, the next chance for scientists to learn more about 2014 MU69 will come in the final weeks and days before New Horizons speeds by the object.

"We won't resolve the object until the week of the flyby, and it's going to be a very exciting, almost overnight experience in which MU69 will go from a point of light to a real place in the sky, a new world that humans have explored," Stern said.

"MU69 will appear as a point of light, or if there are satellites, multiple points of light, until literally the last day or two, and then it will be just a couple of pixels across, and it will only be after the flyby on Jan. 1, 2 and 3, that spectacular images will start to come to the ground."

The Kuiper Belt is made up of hundreds of thousands of frozen rocks and dwarf planets that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. Pluto is the largest of the group, but scientists think the city-sized 2014 MU69 is more representative of the Kuiper Belt's population.

Objects orbiting in the Kuiper Belt are the leftovers from the solar system's formation, when dust came together to form protoplanets, and collisions eventually led to the genesis of the planets themselves.

2014 MU69, which appears reddish in Hubble imagery, has likely remained in its primordial state since the solar system's early history 4.5 billion years ago. Comets that come from the far outer solar system originated in the same frozen, faint environment, but repeated passes near the sun have erased their ancient characteristics.

"This object has always been in this very low collisional environment, very cold — basically 40 degrees above absolute zero (minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit) — so it should have preserved a record of that accretionary time better than anything that's ever been observed by any spacecraft mission in history," Stern said.


New Horizons's trajectory to its next target, the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69. Credit: NASA

Running on a plutonium power source and traveling with enough speed to eventually escape the sun's gravitational grip, New Horizons is se t to make its closest approach to 2014 MU69 at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on Jan. 1, 2019.

The flyby will occur late on New Year's Eve in the other U.S. time zones, when New Horizons will pass by its distant target at a relative velocity of more than 31,000 mph (14 kilometers per second).

Ground controllers placed the spacecraft into hibernation mode last month, and an on-board timer is due to wake up the probe June 4 for an instrument checkout ahead of the formal start of the 2014 MU69 encounter phase in mid-August.

One of New Horizons' first jobs will be to locate 2014 MU69 with its on-board camera, a milestone expected in August or September. The spacecraft's navigation team will use the observations to ensure New Horizons is on the right approach trajectory.

Mission planners have built in nine opportunities for New Horizons to fine-tune its course with minor thruster firings, beginning in mid-October and extending through Dec. 22, according to Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

All of the course corrections may not be required.

"Once we detect (2014 MU69), we'll be looking for the moon that we have the hints of from the occulation data," said John Spencer, New Horizons' deputy project scientist from SWRI. "We'll be looking for maybe additional moons that might be there, trying to map their orbits. We'll be surveying the region around MU69 for hazardous material, and we'll also be refining our navigation of wh ere MU69 is."

The best guess for the potential moon's size is roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) across, and nearly 200 miles (300 kilometers) could separate 2014 MU69's main body from its companion, assuming it exists, according to Buie.

Officials want to know whether any smaller moons surround the object to ensure New Horizons does not collide with any debris during its high-speed encounter.

Scientists have established a preferred flyby trajectory that will take New Horizons around 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) from 2014 MU69, but managers could decide as late as mid-December to re-target an aim point more than 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) away if they find debris, sacrificing some scientific data and high-resolution imagery for safety.

If New Horizons takes the preferred route, the spacecraft will produce sharper images of 2014 MU69 than it did at Pluto, thanks to a flyby distance less than one-third the range of New Horizons' visit to Pluto.

"It's pretty hard to beat what New Horizons did during the Pluto flyby, but one way that the MU69 flyby will actually do better is with spatial resolution," said Hal Weaver, New Horizons' project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "For those of us who are interested in studying the geology of the surface of MU69, and seeing what it really looks like instead of this pinpoint of light ... spatial resolution is everything."

The probe's other instruments will search for a coma, or gas cloud, surrounding 2014 MU69, and scan the object for water, ammonia, carbon monoxide and methane ices. Scientists also want to know what makes the miniature world so red and dark.

It will take nearly two years for New Horizons to beam back all its data on 2014 MU69 back to Earth, transmitting through the vast black gulf of space at a glacial at 1 to 2 kilobits per second.

But broad strokes will land sooner, beginning in late December and extending through the first few days of January 2019, when the first high-resolution views will arrive on Earth.

"Spend your Christmas in the Kuiper Belt," Stern said. "It's going to be exciting, and there's not going to be anything like it again. There's no planned further exploration of the Kuiper Belt."

One journalist asked scientists if they expect to get a lump of coal for Christmas in 2018.

"Maybe two of three lumps of coal," Spencer joked.

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[кукушка]

NASA обнародовало подробности встречи New Horizons с новой целью

Спойлер

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Steve Gribben
В NASA опубликовали подробное расписание сближения зонда New Horizons с его новой целью – астероидом пояса Койпера MU69. Максимальное сближение, как и предполагалось, состоится 1 января 2019 года.

MU69 — это сравнительно небольшое небесное тело, около 30-40 километров в поперечнике (некоторые наблюдения позволяют считать, что на самом деле это двойная система с частями в 20 и 18 километров размером). Новая цель для миссии New Horizons была выбрана уже после исследования Плутона.

Таймлайн миссии
NASA
Согласно расписанию, первые изображения MU69 зонд получит уже в сентябре 2018 года, затем фотографирование этого и других объектов пояса Койпера продолжится. Уже с января этого года начнется изучение заряженных частиц и пыли пояса Койпера. С октября последует серия коррекций орбиты (семь включений двигателя), в декабре будет принято окончательное решение о дистанции сближения. Пока что планируется, что New Horizons пролетит на расстоянии в 3500 километров от объекта(ов). С этого расстояния деталировка объекта составит несколько десятков метров.

Обратная передача данных на Землю должна занять два месяца. Напомним, что передача 50 гигабайт данных с Плутона заняла больше года.

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[che wi]

New Horizons провел самую далекую от Земли фотосессию
https://nplus1.ru/news/2018/02/10/record-in-kuiper-belt

[Димитър]

New Horizons 5 декабря 2017 года получил изображения объектов Пояса Койпера 2012 HZ84 и 2012 HE85.  

А что известно про этих объектов и что можно узнать из полученных изображений? С какого расстояния снимали?