Talvez NUNCA MAIS vejamos algo assim | Imagens Finais pela New Horizons | Plutão e Arrokoth

This video is offered by the Astrofotos com Celular Course. Learn more at the end of this video. In 2015, there was quite a stir in the space community. That’s because until then, the best image we had of Pluto was this one. The Hubble Telescope also oriented its lens towards Pluto, but so small and distant, the best we saw was just a few drops of color variation. But in 2015, everything changed. That’s because after a nine-year journey, the New Horizons space probe has flown by the dwarf planet, giving us clarity of detail of Pluto and its moons like we’ve never seen before. What did the New Horizons spacecraft see and discover during its flyby of the Pluto System? My name is Dennis Ariel, and you are watching Astrum Brasil. Come with me to the end as I’m going to show you all the highlights of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto. Let’s give you some context first, in case you know little about this magnificent Dwarf Planet, or if you haven’t heard from it for a while. In addition to being an extremely beautiful world, it is also small; much smaller than our moon. It is found in the Kuiper Belt, a scattered belt of objects such as asteroids and comets, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Pluto was the last of the traditional 9 planets to be explored. This was due to its distance from us, but also – believe it or not – it was not considered a very interesting celestial body. Fortunately, the New Horizons team worked hard to get this mission approved, and in 2006, New Horizons was launched as part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program for mid-budget space missions. The mission’s objective was to get to Pluto as quickly as possible, and for that, New Horizons was the fastest launch ever, consisting of a super light spacecraft mounted on one of the most powerful space rockets ever. : Atlas V. Overtakes the moon in just 9 hours. The Apollo Program took 10 times longer to do this. On its way to Pluto, it used Jupiter’s gravitational assistance and accelerated the arrival time by 3 years. It also used Jupiter as a test run for its systems, capturing incredible images and videos of the planet and its moons. After this successful test, New Horizons went into sleep mode to avoid wearing out its instruments. Leading up to its approach in 2015, the team reconnected the systems, and every day the spacecraft sent back images of the Pluto System. It was an incredibly emotional moment for enthusiasts who had been following the story. We started to get a glimpse of what Pluto might look like, and how different Pluto was from its largest moon, Charon. Day by day, the resolution of images got higher and higher, and more details could be noticed. Yes, there were other science goals for the mission, but the most interesting thing to me was the appearance of Pluto. Soon it was possible to observe what appeared to be a heart shape on the dwarf planet! And on July 14, the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach, just 12,500km from Pluto’s surface. However, mission controllers did not promptly receive an image. First, the spacecraft was too busy taking several pictures during the flyby, rather than transmitting the images immediately. Once the data transfer started, they had to deal with the slow upload speed of only 1kbit/s. In addition, there was a latency of 4.5 hours between the space probe and Earth. But what he saw and sent back was spectacular: mountain ranges, ice plains, glaciers and an atmosphere. It also got a good look at some of Pluto’s moons. So let’s get into the details of what was actually discovered during this flyby. One of the first observations about Pluto was its unusual relationship with its moons. For starters, Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, has a very close orbit, and it’s also very large in comparison. This means that the centroid of the two bodies, that is, their center of mass, is outside the main celestial body. In fact, they both orbit around a point in space. Not only that, but both bodies are an example of the so-called “Tide Coupling”, that is, both are pegged to each other. This means that if you are in one of the bodies, the other will not move from that point in the sky. This is very unusual, because while some moons are tidally coupled to their primary planets, the planets are not necessarily coupled to their moons. Charon is visually very different from Pluto, being much darker. This implies that they do not have the same origin. The rest of Pluto’s moons are very small, being only a few kilometers in diameter. Their orbits are exceptionally circular and are all coplanar with Pluto’s orbit. Pluto’s geology is very interesting. The biggest visible feature on Pluto is this giant heart-shaped region, which stunned the world when it was first seen. It has since been named Sputnik Plain. It is the size of the US state of Texas, and has a strong color contrast with the surrounding area. That’s because it’s a giant ice plain. In fact, during the flyby, it was confirmed that 98% of Pluto’s surface is made up of frozen nitrogen. On average, the temperature on Pluto’s surface is minus -229 degrees Celsius, which means that water ice would be hard and brittle. On the other hand, nitrogen frozen at that temperature acts like frozen water on Earth, which means it can flow like glaciers. The phenomenon can be observed at the edge of the Plain, glaciers flowing into gaps around craters and mountain ranges. The giant ice plains themselves are polygonal in shape across their entire diameter. There are also no craters, meaning it must be a relatively new feature or one that is constantly being renewed. Maybe it’s only 10 million years old. The polygonal cells show grooves likely caused by sublimation, the process in which ice turns directly into gas. Although it is not known for certain, Sputnik Plain could have formed from an impact, and the craters supposedly filled with ice by a potential subsurface liquid ocean. This full basin actually causes a Positive Gravitational Anomaly. A gravitational anomaly is where the gravity at one point is different from other places on the celestial body. The ice plain is directly opposite the Moon Charon, which would align it with the tidal axis. Due to the short distance between Pluto and Charon, tidal effects are very strong on both bodies. This may be the reason why Pluto is tidally coupled to Charon and the two bodies cannot deviate from each other. Surrounding the ice plains are vast mountain ranges made of water ice, when viewed from the side they look spectacular. Frozen water is the only type of ice detected on Pluto that would be strong enough to withstand heights of several kilometers at this temperature. Among the mountains found on Pluto, some may be cryovolcanoes; one of the most likely candidates is Wright Mons Mountain. It is 4 km high; it is one of the highest peaks on Pluto, with a large depression found at its center. Cryovolcanoes may be a major factor in explaining Pluto’s young surface. Tartarus Dorsa. It is an extensive and highly distinctive set of mountains 500 meters high, resembling snakeskin or tree bark. Believed to be Penitents. If that’s true, Pluto is the only place in our solar system, other than Earth, where they’ve been observed. Even on Earth they are very rare, but some can be found in the Atacama Desert and other dry, high altitude regions. Pluto’s Penitents are much taller and cover a much wider area than they do on Earth. We can only imagine what they look like up close. Another feature of Pluto is the dark material that appears to have been sprayed onto the surface in some regions. The largest “sprayed” region is called the Cthulhu Macula. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the shape of a whale, as seen in this image. The dark color is believed to be a deposit of tholinas, a type of tar made up of hydrocarbons that interact with sunlight. Similar deposits can be seen on Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons; so the process was seen in other parts of the solar system. This region of Pluto is much more heavily cratered than the Sputinik Plain, meaning the surface there could be much older. Mountain ranges can be seen in the middle of Cthulhu Macula, covered in what is believed to be frozen methane. Apparently, methane condenses as frost at high altitudes on Pluto. Water from the mantle or from pockets of water trapped in the crust erupts onto Pluto’s surface, creating a varied landscape. But it turns out that it’s not just water found in these eruptions, but a mixture with tholins. Hubble Space Telescope data suggested that Pluto was getting redder, and New Horizons may have passed during Pluto’s reddest time of its year. And New Horizons may have figured out why. Here, in a region called Viking Earth, we see a cryovolcano that generated this tholin mud and water nearby. Very close to this region, we see a crater and a valley filled with this mud during another eruption. In this valley, you can see where this mud descended and accumulated. The same can also be seen in another region called Virgil Fossae, another valley where this mud descended. However, the most interesting thing about tholinas is not found on Pluto, but on its twin dwarf planet: Charon. In this enhanced color image of Charon, what did you notice right away? The red cap over its north pole. Incredibly, because Pluto’s gravity is so weak, when this mud mixture erupts, some of it completely escapes Pluto and makes a 19,000 km journey to Charon. The tholinas are located here because Pluto and Charon are locked together, in what is called the Tidal Coupling, with their faces constantly facing each other. Poetically speaking, in this eternal waltz, Pluto always hides its “heart” from Charon.