Wednesday, May 13, 2015 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
The Explorers Club, New York, New York
Pluto-Palooza New York at The Explorers Club features Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, leader of the mission team; Cathy Olkin, Deputy Project Scientist; Marc Buie, New Horizons Co-Investigator; and Tiffany Finley, who as a graduate student helped design, build and test the Student Dust Counter and is now a member of the Science Operations Team. Together they will present a dynamic and richly-illustrated overview of the mission and the men and women who make it possible, leaving time for interaction and one-on-one encounters.
The New Horizons mission will help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the Pluto system and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation. New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and began a six-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in early 2015. Pluto closest approach occurs on July 14, 2015. If NASA approves an extended mission, the spacecraft could head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.
Sending a spacecraft on this long journey will help answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies. The National Academy of Sciences ranked the exploration of the Kuiper Belt – including Pluto – as being of the highest priority for solar system research. New Horizons seeks to understand where Pluto and its moons "fit in" with the other objects in the solar system, such as the inner rocky or "terrestrial" planets (Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury) and the outer gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, belong to a third category known as "ice dwarfs." They have solid surfaces but, unlike the terrestrial planets, a significant portion of their mass is icy material.
Using Hubble Space Telescope images, New Horizons team members such as Principal Investigator Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute, SwRI), Project Scientist Hal Weaver (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory) and Co-Investigator Mark Showalter (SETI Institute) have discovered four previously unknown moons of Pluto: Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. And in the last few months before Close Approach the team will be on the lookout for possible new moons and even a ring system that may prove a threat to the spacecraft.
A close-up look at these worlds from the spacecraft promises to reveal an incredible story about the origins and outskirts of our solar system. New Horizons also will explore – for the first time – how ice dwarf planets like Pluto and Kuiper Belt bodies have evolved over time.
New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, is traveling the farthest to reach its primary target, and is the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The United States has been the first nation to reach every planet from Mercury to Neptune with a space probe. If New Horizons is successful, it will allow the U.S. to complete the initial reconnaissance of the solar system.
Tickets for the evening are Free for Explorers Club Members and $20 for non-members.
The evening will begin with a cocktail reception at 6:00 pm, followed by the presentation at 7:00pm. The presentation will conclude with a Q&A session, with the New Horizons team fielding questions from those in attendance.
posted 04-29-2015 01:03 AM
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