New Horizons will begin gathering science data in January and will not finish returning all of the data until late 2016. Because it will be traveling so fast, nearly all of the most important goals for the mission are met in the time from 2.5 hours before to 1 hour after closest approach.
The Pluto mission is divided into several phases:
- Approach Phase 1: 180 to 100 days before closest approach (Jan 6-Apr 4; range to Pluto is 226-121 million km). SWAP and PEPSSI will measure plasma. LORRI will monitor motions of Pluto, Charon, and the smaller moons. Pluto is barely resolved.
- Approach Phase 2: 100 to 21 days before closest approach (Apr 4-Jun 23; range to Pluto is 121-26 million km). Add in color observations, and search for satellites and rings. The start of this phase is chosen to roughly coincide with the time when LORRI has better resolution than Hubble, but Pluto will still be only a few pixels across.
- Approach Phase 3: 21 to 1 days before closest approach (Jun 23-Jul 13; range to Pluto is 26-1.2 million km). Includes best, second-best, and third-best rotation coverage before closest approach, yielding the best global maps of Pluto and Charon. PEPSSI and SWAP may detect pickup ions and bow shock. LEISA and Alice can begin looking for variability in IR and UV. Search for clouds or hazes, tracking winds.
- Near Encounter Phase: -1 to +1 days (Jul 13-15, within 1.2 million km) — sequenced in 2008 and 2009. Most of the highest-priority observations.
- Departure Phase 1: 1 to 21 days after closest approach (Jul 15-Aug 4; range to Pluto is 1.2 to 24 million km). Remote sensing of Pluto and Charon is performed for only 1 rotation. SWAP and PEPSSI study magnetotail, pickup ions. REX studies nightside temperatures. Nix and Hydra high-phase observations. Search for rings.
- Departure Phase 2: 21 to 100 days after closest approach (Aug 5-Oct 22; range to Pluto is 24 to 119 million km).
- Departure Phase 3: 100 to 180 days after (Oct 22-Jan 1, 2016; range to Pluto is 119 to 203 million km). No remote sensing observations planned.
A photograph featuring a pair of fuzzy blobs. Golly, I'm so very impressed.
Let's wait for something more significant, when the New Horizons probe does the fly-by of Pluto and comes up with some rather more detailed pictures, then we may have something to sensibly comment on. And maybe something else once it journeys into the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt... a tenth planet? Not this one [Link] , I mean this possibility: [Link]
There is something funny going on out there. Not just the apparently common origin of new comets diving into the inner solar system. There's also the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Cliff. We really don't know very much about the outer realms of our home star system.
There's also the Dawn probe. I'm waiting to see the pictures Dawn takes as it settles into the orbit of Ceres. Just what are those white spots?