New Horizons is still downloading data of the flyby by a very small rate given the distance and the electrical power available. It may take years.
Tullio

IIRC 18 months.

I wonder if NASA uses the Kalman filtering on such long distance low power radio transmissions. I knew something about it since I had to translate and dictate an article by Rudolf E.Kalman on this subject which he had sent to Mondadori on a small magnetic cassette, like the ones used for recording music. The secretary asked for my help, so I translated on the fly and gave her an Italian version.
Tullio

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According to "Nature" New Horizons has measured the Pluto atmospheric pressure as 0.005 Pascal while the Earth-based measurements deriving from the 29 July occultation of a star by Pluto gave a figure much higher, 0.022 Pascal.New Horizons still has to transmit 95% of its data to Earth. It will restart transmitting images on September 5.
Tullio

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According to "Nature" New Horizons has measured the Pluto atmospheric pressure as 0.005 Pascal while the Earth-based measurements deriving from the 29 July occultation of a star by Pluto gave a figure much higher, 0.022 Pascal.New Horizons still has to transmit 95% of its data to Earth. It will restart transmitting images on September 5.
Tullio

Looking forward to some more information on what is happening on the far away planet.

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rOZZ
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The fastest spacecraft ever?

The record holder is easy to find, it's the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt.

Launched by NASA in 2006, it shot directly to a solar system escape velocity. This consisted of an Earth-relative launch of 16.26 kilometers a second (that's about 36,000 miles per hour), plus a velocity component from Earth's orbital motion (which is 30 km/s tangential to the orbital path). Altogether this set New Horizons barreling off into the solar system with an impressive heliocentric speed of almost 45 km/s or 100,000 miles per hour.

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rOZZ
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Go and see the new images of Pluto on the NASA site. They are astonishing.
Tullio

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Go and see the new images of Pluto on the NASA site. They are astonishing.
Tullio

Here they are, amazing indeed!

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated

Rather funny we already gave names to the maria and mountains. I read in my astronomy magazine they already mapped the planet as well.

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rOZZ
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Somewhat more than just a ball of ice and rock. All that geology on such a small world.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Also on Charon. Plenty of work for geologists.
Tullio

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More new images. Just look in the link. :)

Latest images reveal Pluto's hazy horizon


Fresh images from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft have captured a low-lying haze clinging to the surface of Pluto.

The pictures also offer stunning views of the dwarf planet's rugged mountains and its sweeping plains.

New Horizons acquired a mass of observations as it whipped past Pluto on 14 July, at a distance of 12,500km.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34285426

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New image of Pluto.

Perplexing Pluto: New ‘Snakeskin’ Image and More from New Horizons

The newest high-resolution images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons are both dazzling and mystifying, revealing a multitude of previously unseen topographic and compositional details. The image below -- showing an area near the line that separates day from night -- captures a vast rippling landscape of strange, aligned linear ridges that has astonished New Horizons team members.

“It’s a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles,” said William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead from Washington University in St. Louis. “It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology. This’ll really take time to figure out; maybe it’s some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto’s faint sunlight.”


In this extended color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, informally named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s day-night terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. This view, roughly 330 miles (530 kilometers) across, combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14, 2015, and resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers).
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/perplexing-pluto-new-snakeskin-image-and-more-from-new-horizons

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Lynn those are worth a wow!
Thanx

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Looks like there are some "lakes" in the bottom right in the pic.
Awesome.

[img] [/img]

A baleful eye stared at the tiny craft as it flew by, unsuspecting.
The Sign had come. It was time...

You see Pluto.
I see Cthulhu.

Oh my, how gorgeous Charon looks! Just got to wonder what that big crater is at the top of her. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history

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Oh my, how gorgeous Charon looks! Just got to wonder what that big crater is at the top of her. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history

Great choice for a name, too - Mordor Macula. I hope they make it formal.

Awesome!

New Horizons Finds Blue Skies and Water Ice on Pluto

The first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team. “That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/nh-finds-blue-skies-and-water-ice-on-pluto

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Nice place for a quick visit but I wouldn't want to live there. ;)

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Blue skies, amazing.. Thanx for the update Lynn :)

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rOZZ
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Nice place for a quick visit but I wouldn't want to live there. ;)

well, if they make a large nuclear plant with lots of waste heat...no problem then!
:)

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