Geeks in Space: That’s Not a Moon… oh, Maybe It Is
Two labeled images of the Pluto system taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 ultraviolet visible instrument with newly discovered fourth moon P4 circled. The image on the left was taken on June 28, 2011. The image of the right was taken on July 3, 2011. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI institute)
Despite its downgraded status to a dwarf planet, Pluto continues to surprise scientists as the faithful space telescope Hubble rooted out a fourth satellite in its orbit while searching for rings around the distant, icy dwarf. Temporarily labeled P4, the moon only has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) around. Nix and Hydra are 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km) respectively.
The discovery is a result of NASA’s New Horizons mission, mentioned last week in the report on the spacecraft Juno’s preparations which will eventually travel to Pluto. The discovery is fortuitous as now scientists can plan for close-up observations of the newly discovered object.
Now the biggest question I have is, what are we gonna call the little guy? Let’s all raise our hands for Goofy, shall we?
Dawn and Vesta Together At Last
This composite image shows the comparative sizes of nine asteroids. Up until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it's a large body that almost became a planet, dwarfs all other small bodies in this image, with its diameter sizing up at approximately 330 miles (530 kilometers). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA
After a four year journey searching for her lady love, the Dawn spacecraft has finally entered orbit around the second-most largest body in the asteroid belt, 4 Vesta. Using her high-tech ion engine, Dawn performed the largest thrusting acceleration of any spacecraft, achieving a change in velocity of more than 4.2 miles per second (6.7 kilometers per second) as she consummated her orbit with the asteroid.
“Dawn slipped gently into orbit with the same grace it has displayed during its years of ion thrusting through interplanetary space,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “It is fantastically exciting that we will begin providing humankind its first detailed views of one of the last unexplored worlds in the inner solar system.”
Dawn will spend the next year getting to know Vesta, expanding our knowledge of the asteroid belt and then the fickle craft will go off in search of a new conquest, the august dwarf planet Ceres. Who knew space exploration could be so romantic?
The Unsung Shuttle
OV-95 is like a shuttle without its skin, with every wire and electrical box exposed.
She has been sitting in a hanger at the Johnson Space Center in Houston since she was built. She has never flown. She doesn’t have engines or landing gear or wings. She doesn’t even have a name.
Yet Orbiter Vehicle 95, or OV-95, has “flown” all 135 space shuttle missions and dozens of precursor test flights by the prototype shuttle Enterprise. Not a mock-up, she is an exact electronic replica of her bigger sisters and her job is to make sure that the software and the 230 miles of wiring required to fly the shuttles are error-free.
Just last week when Atlantis’s computers shut down, engineers used OV-95 to find out why. OV-95 has the same five general purpose computers that controlled Atlantis exactly wired the same way. Her cockpit is lined with switches on the walls and ceilings and electronic boxes and electronics that would link up with all of the shuttle’s main systems.
“I liken it to a human body without the skin,” said United Space Alliance engineer Frank Svrcek, who oversees the project. “Underneath you see the organs, blood vessels and the nerves. You see the complete human body. With OV-95, you see the scene behind the scene, the wiring and the black boxes. You see how complex the orbiter really is.”
While the working shuttles and Enterprise are being prepared for their retirement, no plans yet have been concluded on what will happen with OV-95.
Check out this Video of the Week of a prominence captured by the Solar Dynamic Observatory
Have a great week!
Affiliates
