Kind: captions
Language: en
NASA leaves nothing to chance every
detail of a big mission like this is
precisely calculated and the team uses
simulations as a dress rehearsal for the
big
day project scientist Kathy Olin walks
us through what she and the rest of the
team hope will be key moments in New
Horizon's Journey this is a model of
Pluto surrounded by its five
moons this is the trajectory of the New
Horizon spacecraft we fly straight
through the system and then keep
going 4:00 in the afternoon if all was
going well the spacecraft is
500,000 miles away from Pluto and New
Horizon's largest imager Lori should be
taking an extraordinary picture of Pluto
that includes everything inside this
white
frame we get the whole hemisphere of
Pluto is seen from New Horizons this
will be one of the first images that
sent down after closest
approach we will have data better than
anything we have ever obtained from the
ground or from the h space telescope
July 14th at 6:00 a.m. Pluto's getting
closer and
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closer on this critical day Lori will
take this series of images from 60,000
miles
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away get about a million pixels in each
of these lry
images when stitched together they
should form the first detailed map of
Pluto's
surface then at 7:30 the spacecraft
should be soaring just 6,500 m above
Pluto's surface if all is going well New
Horizons must have an amazing view the
green squares of Lori gives the highest
resolution image showing the most detail
on the surface are there
craters is there fresh snow very likely
we'll see something just no one expected
at 9:00 a.m. the spacecraft will fly
into Pluto's Shadow to observe the Sun
as it lights up Pluto's
atmosphere these are some of my favorite
observations we're going to learn so
much about Pluto's atmosphere from this
are there going to be surprises when we
encamp Pluto absolutely I think that's
almost a guarantee whenever we encounter
something new in our solar system
something we've never been past before
never been close up to before we see
things we had not expected that's the
beauty of exploration