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Why Pluto Lost its Planet Title

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A Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012. ( Source: NASA)

 

Have you ever wondered what Pluto could have possibly done to lose it’s position as the ninth planet from the Sun? Well, it’s all about gaining a better understanding of our solar system.

Pluto, once dubbed Planet X, was originally discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh and was then later officially classified as the ninth planet from the Sun. As time went on Pluto continued to be considered to be the largest object past Neptune, which justified it’s planetary title, but as technology improved we began to find more and more objects in the outer solar system.

These objects in the outer solar system all orbit the Sun and are collectively known as the Kuiper Belt, which was officially discovered in 1992. The objects in the Kuiper Belt are numerous and made up of mostly of rock, metal, and ice. With more and more objects being discovered, it was likely that we would soon find a Kuiper Belt object that was larger than Pluto, which was eventually found in 2005. The object found was discovered by Mike Brown and his team and was later named Eris, which is 2,600 km across compared to Pluto’s 2,400 km. However, this information may be inaccurate as recent measurements have shown Eris to be much smaller than initially stated, in some cases it may actually be smaller than Pluto.

With all of these new discoveries it was becoming harder and harder to justify Pluto being our ninth planet. What really helped put an end to Pluto’s planet-hood was when we compared Pluto to the IAU’s (International Astronomical Union) definition of a planet which states that in order for an object to be considered a planet, it must meet the following requirements:

  1. is in orbit around the Sun,
  2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
  3. has “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit. ( This means it must be the largest and most gravitationally dominant object in it’s orbital path)

Pluto runs into a big problem with the third requirement as the would-be planet is less than 1% of the mass of any other object in it’s orbit. This officially makes Pluto a Dwarf Planet and thus no longer the ninth planet in our solar system. Regardless of Pluto’s new title, we will always have a place in our hearts for the tiny cold rock. In fact, we will be visiting Pluto in 2015 as NASA’s Horizons spacecraft will be reaching the Dwarf Planet after a 3 billion mile, 10 year journey to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Also, it’s important to note that many disagree with these recent changes to Pluto’s classification and are advocating the overturning of the IAU definition of a planet that caused this debate and downgrade of Pluto. You can read more information about this effort on LaurelsPlutoBlog.

 

Watch a Rocket Launch Headed Toward Moon

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LADEE Launch Viewing Map - Elevation
LADEE Launch Viewing Map – Elevation (Image Credit: Orbital.com)

On September 6, 2013 at the Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia, the Minotaur V rocket will launch NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment (LADEE) into a lunar transfer orbit. The rocket will take LADEE in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth that will continue for 23 days.

During that time period the spacecraft will orbit the Earth 3.5 times, as time progresses the Moon’s gravitational field will increase the perigee of the orbit and the spacecraft will fire its thrusters to enter an orbit around the Moon. LADEE is on a 100 day mission to examine the atmosphere of the Moon from 50km above its surface.

The targeted launch window is on September 6, 2013 from 11:27 – 11:31 PM EDT. The map above shows the locations at which you will likely be able to see the launch. As you get further from the launch site, the rocket will appear lower and lower on the horizon and anything below 5º will likely be too low to see. For more information on this project and a link to a Google Earth (KMZ) file to help you find out where to see the launch, head to Orbital’s mission update page.

 

NASA Plans To Put Asteroid in Orbit Around The Moon

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The mission is clear, NASA wants to capture and redirect an asteroid that’s about 7-10 meters in diameter, weighs around 500 tons and is reasonably close to Earth. After the asteroid is captured it will be placed in an orbit around our Moon. The next step will be to send up a manned spacecraft to intercept the now lunar orbiting asteroid/spacecraft and hitch onto it. Astronauts will then go outside the spacecraft and take samples of the asteroid to bring back to Earth.

This type of mission obviously requires an incredible amount of preparation and initial planning. One of the first steps will be improving asteroid detection here on Earth, then finding a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) that we can capture. An asteroid suitable for capture would need to be relatively stable and slow moving, it can’t be spinning wildly end-over-end tumbling through space or it would be to difficult to grab. Part of the capture process involves the capturing spacecraft matching the rotation of the asteroid in order to be able to catch it, this process is demonstrated in the animated video above. Next, we would need to focus on the asteroids composition, after all, if we are going to make a mission out of it we mine as well pick the most interesting asteroid, perhaps one with valuable resources.

This mission will also be the first step that mankind has taken toward intercepting an asteroid, which is significant not only for researching the asteroid itself but also in learning ways to in which to protect our planet from future asteroid impacts, especially ones that could cause widespread destruction. We currently have no “real” plans for protecting our only home and although it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, we should still be preparing and expanding our knowledge in this area. Asteroid mining techniques could also prove to be very useful on long missions into the far reaches of our solar system. We could possibly use asteroids as a source of fuel or for harvesting elements needed to sustain life or to build structures.

The goal is to make all of this happen by 2025. You can read more about the Asteroid Initiative on NASA’s official page.

 

Voyager 1 Leaves the Solar System, Maybe?

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voyager2_large
Voyager Spacecraft ( Source: NASA/JPL)

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the most distant human-made object at over 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from our sun. The mission of the Voyager spacecraft both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, was to explore Jupiter and Saturn. After major success, the mission was extended to have Voyager 2 explore Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is still operating and sending back data after more than 35 years later. The new mission of the Voyager spacecraft named, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), is to explore space outside of our solar system, which is all new territory for us.

We have been anticipating Voyager 1 to finally leave our solar system completely and enter interstellar space, one group thinks we have done just that. UMD research scientist Marc Swisdak,  James F. Drake and Merav Opher of Boston University believe that recent data suggests that Voyager 1 is now in interstellar  space, this conflicts with NASA’s view of the data in which they believe the spacecraft is still on the outer edge of our solar system.

It’s a somewhat controversial view, but we think Voyager has finally left the Solar System, and is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way”

It’s all about our sun’s magnetic field and how it interacts with the magnetic field of interstellar space. The direction that the magnetic field of interstellar space is coming from is the source of controversy. As NASA writes, “Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble.”. This is in contrast to the view that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun, which would mean that Voyager 1 left our solar system back on July 27th, 2012.

This is obviously new for everyone and discussions will need to continue in order to better understand what’s going on at the edge of our solar system. The best thing we can do is continue to analyze new data as it comes in and hopefully it will provide a clearer picture.

You can read the original article from NASA about this topic and you can learn more about the Voyager spacecraft from a post we did last year.

 

Earth and Moon As Seen From Saturn

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EarthFromSaturn
Earth as seen From Saturn, PhotoTaken by Cassini on July 19th 2013. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

It’s not too often that we see our world from afar but when we do it’s truly an amazing and humbling experience. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was able to get into position next to the great planet of Saturn and take a look back at Earth from 900 million miles away. The image is in color and in high resolution, Earth is nothing but a blue dot with a small white dot next to it, that white dot is the Moon of course. Saturn’s rings reflect sunlight towards the camera and against the black backdrop of outer space, it looks truly beautiful.

Cassini’s picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth.” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

As NASA points out, pictures like these are very rare because Earth appears very close to the sun at that distance and trying to take a picture could ruin the camera’s sensitive electronics with that much sunlight hitting it. This is just one section of an image that will become a mosaic of Saturn’s rings. You can read the original article and see a full-resolution version of this image from NASA.