jueves, 16 de julio de 2015

LA ÚLTIMA FRONTERA ▲ From Mountains to Moons: Multiple Discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons | NASA

From Mountains to Moons: Multiple Discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons | NASA

From Mountains to Moons: Multiple Discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons Pluto Mission

Mountains on Pluto

New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise -- a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
Credits: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI
Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon, Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by the NASA's New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft’s first ever Pluto flyby.
"Pluto New Horizons is a true mission of exploration showing us why basic scientific research is so important," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission has had nine years to build expectations about what we would see during closest approach to Pluto and Charon. Today, we get the first sampling of the scientific treasure collected during those critical moments, and I can tell you it dramatically surpasses those high expectations."
“Home run!” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “New Horizons is returning amazing results already. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind blowing."
A new close-up image of an equatorial region near the base of Pluto’s bright heart-shaped feature shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old solar system. This suggests the close-up region, which covers about one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.
“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” said Jeff Moore of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.  
Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer at SwRI.
The new view of Charon reveals a youthful and varied terrain. Scientists are surprised by the apparent lack of craters. A swath of cliffs and troughs stretching about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) suggests widespread fracturing of Charon’s crust, likely the result of internal geological processes. The image also shows a canyon estimated to be 4 to 6 miles (7 to 9 kilometers) deep. In Charon’s north polar region, the dark surface markings have a diffuse boundary, suggesting a thin deposit or stain on the surface.
New Horizons also observed the smaller members of the Pluto system, which includes four other moons: Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. A new sneak-peak image of Hydra is the first to reveal its apparent irregular shape and its size, estimated to be about 27 by 20 miles (43 by 33 kilometers).
The observations also indicate Hydra's surface is probably coated with water ice. Future images will reveal more clues about the formation of this and the other moon billions of years ago. Spectroscopic data from New Horizons’ Ralph instruments reveal an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences among regions across the frozen surface of Pluto. 
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Follow the New Horizons mission on Twitter and use the hashtag #PlutoFlyby to join the conversation. Live updates also will be available on the missionFacebook page.
For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and all the new images, visit:
and
-end-
Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov
Mike Buckley

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

240-228-7536

michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu
Maria Stothoff

Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio

210-522-3305

maria.stothoff@swri.org
Last Updated: July 15, 2015
Editor: Karen Northon
Mountains on Pluto

New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system -- and may still be in the process of building, says Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI). That suggests the close-up region, which covers less than one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.
Moore and his colleagues base the youthful age estimate on the lack of craters in this scene. Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered -- unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.
“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” says Moore.    
Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
 “This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The mountains are probably composed of Pluto’s water-ice “bedrock.”
Although methane and nitrogen ice covers much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains. Instead, a stiffer material, most likely water-ice, created the peaks. “At Pluto’s temperatures, water-ice behaves more like rock,” said deputy GGI lead Bill McKinnon of Washington University, St. Louis.
The close-up image was taken about 1.5 hours before New Horizons closest approach to Pluto, when the craft was 478,000 miles (770,000 kilometers) from the surface of the planet. The image easily resolves structures smaller than a mile across.



Image Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI
Pluto surface scale
Last Updated: July 15, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert
Sonda ‘New Horizons’: Plutón tiene montañas de agua helada y permanece activo | Ciencia | EL PAÍS
MISIÓN NEW HORIZONS »

Plutón tiene montañas de agua helada y permanece activo

Las imágenes más cercanas a Plutón tomadas por la nave 'New Horizons' muestran una superficie sin cráteres que indica que el planeta enano se mantiene activo geológicamente

 16 JUL 2015 - 09:18 CEST


Los científicos de la NASA se mostraron exultantes durante la rueda de prensa en la que presentaron los primeros resultados de la visita de la sonda New Horizons a Plutón y sus lunas. "Tuve un buen día ayer", comenzó Alan Stern, investigador principal de la misión. "La sonda está ya a más de un millón de millas de distancia de Plutón, está bien y se comunica correctamente", afirmó. "Y hay montañas en el cinturón de Kuiper", anunció.
En las primeras imágenes que mostraron de Plutón, observaron que no había cráteres producidos por el impacto de asteroides. Eso significa, según los investigadores, que la superficie es muy joven, con menos de 100 millones de años de edad, y que Plutón puede ser un planeta todavía activo.
Junto al corazón que se observaba en las últimas imágenes de Plutón antes del encuentro con el artefacto de la NASA, que han bautizado informalmente como región Tombaugh, en honor al descubridor del planeta enano, han mostrado imágenes más detalladas en las que se ven montañas de agua helada. Algunas de ellas serían comparables a las que se pueden encontrar en la Tierra.
También se ofreció información sobre alguno de los satélites que orbitan alrededor de Plutón, como Caronte, el mayor de ellos. Probablemente ha sido geológicamente activo recientemente y tiene cañones de más de seis kilómetros de profundidad. John Spencer, miembro del equipo científico de New Horizons, sugiere que "algo debe mantener caliente el interior de Caronte". En este satélite, existe también una región oscura que los investigadores han comenzado a llamar Mordor.

Imagen de Caronte
Imagen de Caronte, la luna de Plutón. La región oscura al norte ha sido bautizada como Mordor / NASA
Durante los próximos días y semanas, los científicos, que ya están analizando la información enviada desde Plutón, deberán comenzar a tratar de entender algunos de los misterios que ya han planteado las primeras imágenes. Que Plutón siga geológicamente activo 4.500 millones de años después de su formación ha sorprendido a los científicos. Tritón, un satélite de Neptuno que se ha comparado en ocasiones con el planeta enano, tiene este tipo de actividad, pero es algo que se achaca a la influencia de la gravedad del planeta gigante, que provoca mareas internas en su luna. Dada la densidad de Plutón, se consideraba que podía tener elementos radiactivos en su interior, pero no se pensaba que serían suficientes para calentar un planeta de ese tamaño. Los nuevos datos indican que es posible.
Todo esto, no obstante, son especulaciones a partir de un rápido análisis de los primeros datos que llegan desde el cinturón de Kuiper, tan lejos que la luz y las ondas de radio tardan más de cuatro horas en llegar hasta la Tierra. Después llegará más información, un estudio más concienzudo y artículos científicos que ayudarán a saber cómo es en realidad aquel planeta tan familiar, pero tan desconocido.

Pluto: The Ice Plot Thickens | NASA

Pluto: The Ice Plot Thickens

Pluto Methane

The latest spectra from New Horizons Ralph instrument reveal an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.
“We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light,” said New Horizons co-investigator Will Grundy, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.  In one of the visually dark equatorial patches, the methane ice has shallower infrared absorptions indicative of a very different texture.  “The spectrum appears as if the ice is less diluted in nitrogen,” Grundy speculated “or that it has a different texture in that area.” 
An Earthly example of different textures of a frozen substance:  a fluffy bank of clean snow is bright white, but compacted polar ice looks blue.  New Horizons’ surface composition team, led by Grundy, has begun the intricate process of analyzing Ralph data to determine the detailed compositions of the distinct regions on Pluto.
This is the first detailed image of Pluto from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array, part of the Ralph instrument on New Horizons.  The observations were made at three wavelengths of infrared light, which are invisible to the human eye. In this picture, blue corresponds to light of wavelengths 1.62 to 1.70 micrometers, a channel covering a medium-strong absorption band of methane ice, green (1.97 to 2.05 micrometers) represents a channel where methane ice does not absorb light, and red (2.30 to 2.33 micrometers) is a channel where the light is very heavily absorbed by methane ice.  The two areas outlined on Pluto show where Ralph observations obtained the spectral traces at the right.  Note that the methane absorptions (notable dips) in the spectrum from the northern region are much deeper than the dips in the spectrum from the dark patch.  The Ralph data were obtained by New Horizons on July 12, 2015.

Image Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI
Last Updated: July 16, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert

Views of Pluto Through the Years | NASA

Views of Pluto Through the Years

animation of views of Pluto through the years
This animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.
Complete source list in order with image credits:
Clyde Tombaugh, Lowell Observatory, 1930: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=19989
Note: This image is property of the Lowell Observatory Archives. Any public use requires written permission of the Lowell Observatory Archives.
New Horizons, July 15, 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iyd-gh2rhM
Last Updated: July 16, 2015
Editor: Rob Garner
--..--

el dispensador dice:
el universo no presenta fronteras,
el universo no exhibe banderas,
el universo no tiene título de propiedad,
el universo no es pasible de patente intelectual,
el universo responde a un orden...
al que el ser humano no responde...

 ¿sabes acaso cuál es tu última frontera?,
¿tu alma?,
¿tu espíritu?,
¿tu consciencia?,
¿tu paz?,
¿tu paciencia?...
¿eres consciente de lo efímero de tu presencia?,
¿eres consciente de que el universo permanecerá cuando ya hayas partido?,
¿eres consciente que el orden existe y perdura más allá de tu impaciencia?,
¿eres consciente que todo funciona sin que hagas nada por ello?,
¿eres consciente que la vida late y crece mientras duermes?,
¿eres consciente que no eres dueño de nada de lo que posees?,

 Plutón es la última frontera de una pobre idea,
consistente en un límite propio de la soberbia,
siempre hay un más allá que aguarda,
mientras cursa la sapiencia,
envuelta en desesperos y sus urgencias,
donde el dinero carcome la consciencia,
haciéndole creer que el poder... es capaz de ocultar ausencias...
cubriéndolas con monedas,
con palabras... atropellos... vehemencias...
poco es lo que queda,
cuando el alma se desprende,
y el espacio se torna vigencia...

 no te equivoques...
este universo que transitas,
no tiene fronteras...
y en tu vida así como en tu gracia,
tú eres tu última frontera,
consistente en eso que llamas "consciencia".
JULIO 16, 2015.-
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