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The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System

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there's a mysterious Zone far out in our

solar system it's a region of ice worlds

some solitary some with

moons their names may be unfamiliar AIS

maake haa but they hold Clues to all our

Origins and the first of these worlds

and the one will reach in 2015 is the

king of the Kyper belt Pluto the long

journey of NASA's New Horizons Mission

began in 2006 aboard America's biggest

baddest rocket tricked out with every

conceivable booster we built a very

light spacecraft and bought a very large

launch vehicle and the combination is

ferocious but in some sense it All Began

in 1930 with Clyde tomall 24 years old

and fresh off a farm in Kansas but

willing to spend long hours scanning

starfields to find a moving point of

light he Humanity's first glimpse of

Pluto the dream of actually getting to

Pluto began with a 6-year-old boy in

love with science who grew up to lead a

team of brilliant researchers and

Engineers with dogged persistence

through Decades of Planning and Building

and testing a Race Against Time just to

get to the Launchpad exploring the outer

solar system because it so far takes a

lot of time it requires a lot of

patience a lot of dedication a lot of

perseverance

but it's a frontier assuming all goes

well at Pluto NASA may choose to extend

the adventure further out into the Kyper

belt the Solar System's mysterious third

Zone this is maybe the one chance in my

lifetime that we're going to get a

spacecraft out there and look up close

at one of these kelt objects December

6th 2014 we

have New Horizons wakes up for the last

time from hibernation New Horizons is

speeding towards Pluto at a phenomenal

rate and we can't wait for it to get

there January 27th 2015 6 months of

approach science begins July 14th

2015 New Horizon's Long Journey 3

billion miles 9 years in flight and 85

years of speculation about Pluto

climaxes in one day of close approach

and flyby you know we're rounding third

base and we're headed home the dream the

adventure the promise of Discovery

that's what makes 2015 the year of

[Music]

Pluto studying Pluto and its neighbors

from Earth is one of the toughest

challenges in

astronomy it takes the largest

telescopes and most advanced

instrumentation on the planet and and

it's tough even for the Hubble Space

Telescope and it takes time from the

discovery of Pluto in 1930 to NASA

approving the New Horizons mission in

2001 to arriving at the planet in 2015

it's been 85 years and time passing is

definitely an actor in our story but

it's the combination of human skill

Cutting Edge image processing and sheer

bloody-minded persistence that has

resulted in the most important

discoveries and that's a tale as true

today as back in 1930 when Pluto was

first found by Clyde

Tomba in 2011 at The seti Institute near

San Francisco Mark shalter used Hubble

data to discover two new moons around

Pluto although he was actually looking

for possible Rings Showalter has found

Rings associated with small moons around

other planets and that was kind of the

motivation for uh checking out Pluto

it's got two little satellites

satellites raise clouds of dust let's

see what might be there it's easy to

take artistic license to show what

Pluto's Rings might look like in reality

it's incredibly hard to see faint

objects against the dense background

Starfield and the glare from Pluto and

its large Moon Kon we came up with this

trick where you take the images and then

you rotate the camera 90° you take more

images and if you do that all just right

you can do this thing where all that

glare cancels out and what we're left

with is just the Rings we can think of

it as a stack of images think of it as

like a cube looking down so let's uh

let's turn it on its side so now if we

start peeling off the layers and looking

downward through the stack things

suddenly become much much cleaner for

example Hydra and Nyx show up very very

cleanly but the thing that immediately

caught my eye was this little dot right

there it's not a perfectly Sharp hot

pixel like over here and that's what

made it pretty convincing to me that we

had seen a very small moon of Pluto that

nobody had seen before to be sure you've

detected a real moon or Planet you have

to show it's moving unlike the

background Stars the thing that makes

moons distinctive is if we come back

later they'd all have shifted because

they all orbit the central Planet this

required a great deal of patience to

then wait about 6 days until we got our

next set of observations of the Pluto

system sure enough the object was still

there it had moved by just about the

right amount to be something orbiting

Pluto and we knew we had a moon next

year sh Walter and colleagues went back

and built on Lessons Learned to see what

else might be there summer

2012 now Mark had 15 more days of Hubble

observations now what you can see here

are three time steps each of those time

steps is actually about 45 minutes of

data does that means it's long enough

that the Little Moons move it's moving

back and forth in the three frame

sequence Hydra is moving NYX is moving I

mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist

to say that that looks like a little

moon of Pluto it's moving just the way

the other s are they're all going around

the planet in the same direction and so

was just a couple of weeks later that we

made the announcement that the fifth

Moon had been discovered patience

persistence Ingenuity that was exactly

what led to the discovery of Pluto back

1930 in Kansas in the 1920s Clyde Tomba

grew up in hard times and built

telescopes using leftover farm

implements to check the accuracy of his

best telescope he sent drawing of Mars

and Jupiter to the L observatory in

Flagstaff Arizona they were looking for

staff and he was hired along with

observing the Stars he stoked the

furnace and shoveled snow but one

assignment made history day after day

he'd use this machine known as a blink

comparator to look for anything in his

images that moved it was tedious

painstaking work but on plates taken on

January 23rd and 29th and analyzed in

February he saw a small dot that did

move against the fixed Stars announcing

the results after careful confirmation

The Observatory made it easy to find the

new planet by adding arrows this is an

incredible work of observational

astronomy and having done something

similar but with much more powerful

tools I can really appreciate his

achievement for decades Pluto remained

more or less a point of life light but

in the mid '70s Dale crook shank and

colleagues attached cameras with

infrared filters to a telescope at kit

Peak detectors or sensors had been

improved and larger telescopes had

become available well we did that work

in 1976 and found evidence for Frozen

methane on pluto surface it was several

years later that we found the evidence

for the other ises in 1978 astronomers

Jim Christie and Bob Harrington analyzed

new plates taken at the US Naval

Observatory and Flagstaff christe noted

an elongation to the north of Pluto 1

month later the bump had disappeared

from this and other evidence they

concluded that Pluto like Earth had a

moon Kon from eclipses between Pluto and

Kon occurring in the 1980s astronomers

calculated that the moon was almost half

the size of its parent body so large

that both objects spin around their

Mutual Center of gravity outside Pluto

Pluto and Kon were the first double

dwarf planet combo discovered in our

solar system using the basic physics of

their orbits and the distance between

them astronomers could calculate their

mass and size Pluto was a little smaller

than Earth's Moon about 1500 m in

diameter and had only one tenth its mass

between 1985 and 1990 astronomers were

in luck as Pluto and Karen orbited their

Mutual ual center of gravity each passed

in turn in front of the other the

so-called Mutual events allowed

astronomers like Mark buoy to capture

the changing patterns of light patiently

buoy created a map of Pluto Pluto turned

out to have one of the two most

contrasty surfaces in the entire solar

system in the mid90s buoy and Allan

Stern used the Hubble Space Telescope to

make the first direct images of Pluto's

surface and it's exciting to mark and I

and to our whole scientific team uh to

be able to see this object that no

humans really could Glimpse as a real

planet as a real object in the solar

system previously in 2005 Hal Weaver and

Allen Stern used the Hubble for another

close-up look at Pluto and Kon they

discovered two small dim moons where

only Kon had been seen before now we

know from Mark showalter's work that

there are two more moons making the

current total of five and that Pluto is

a genuine many planetary system from its

size and orbit astronomers estimated

that Pluto is perhaps 70% Rock and 30%

ice that makes it one of the largest of

a whole new class of objects the ice

dwarf planets making up what's known as

the Kyper belt this region is named for

Gerard Kyper a leading mid 20th century

planetary astronomer Kyper suggested

that the solar system didn't end with

Neptune and Pluto but that there should

be a dis of other other worlds Beyond

them in 1992 from a Mountaintop in

Hawaii David jitt and Jane Lou found the

first Kyer belt object they were using

new and highly sensitive ccds like the

sensors in a modern digital camera but

their technique was essentially an

updated version of tomba's work take

carefully registered images of a patch

of sky and see if anything moves against

the distant Stars this one qb1 did just

that it was only a few hundred km across

10 times smaller than Pluto but still

huge compared to a comet since then

teams of astronomers have found around

2,000

kbos informed by Cutting Edge astronomy

but with a fair dose of artistic license

let's take a trip through this third

zone of our solar system we used to

think of the solar system of consisting

of two different types of planets the

planets we call the terrestrial planets

which are earthlike planets that would

be Mercury Venus Earth and Mars next out

the asteroid belt fragments of Worlds

smashed to Pieces by gravitation and

collisions then come the four gas giants

Jupiter and its moons Saturn with its

magnificent Rings Uranus also ringed and

Neptune and then Pluto was this kind of

you know odd guy out it was this little

object at the edge of the solar system

and then when we found all these other

Qui rebelled objects this is kind of

almost a third type of object so for the

first time ever we'll be able to fly by

a brand new object an object that's been

forming for billions of years and

understand what outer parts of the solar

system are all about by July 2015 we'll

know for sure what Pluto and its moons

look like and that will provide

breakthrough information on all those

other ice dwarf planets the most

numerous planetary objects in the entire

solar system that make up the Kyper belt

actually the Kyper belt is more like a

dut bulging up above and down below the

ecliptic where most of the planets move

it's kind of like the asteroid belt but

much bigger it has hundreds of times

more objects in it than the asteroid

belt let's now visit five named kbos in

the exact positions they'll be in on

July 14th 20 5 the day when New Horizons

flies by Pluto quaa was one of the first

Kyper Bel objects to discovered it's

about 1,000 km in diameter a reddish

World covered in water ice methane and

ethane and like many kbos it has a tiny

Moon of its own way

what up above and down below the plane

of the solar system numerous kbos have

been flung about by Neptune's gravity

this region is known as the scattered

disc one of the largest of these kbos

aerys is close in size to Pluto and is

made of rock and methane

ice astronomers categorize kbos by the

tilt of their orbits relative to the

plane of the solar

system and one of the more highly

inclined orbits belongs to Mak Mak named

for a Hawaiian creation

deity some of these have methane or

water ice on their surfaces some of them

just seem to be covered in some brownish

Gunk there are gray objects out there

there are brown objects out there they

seem to be distinct

populations some of them seem to be very

spherical and so they probably have warm

interiors and then others are peculiar

shapes which suggest they're very cold

and

strong perhaps the most bizarre and

unexpected kbo is how AA a kbo shaped

like an American football made of rock

and Ice it's white with red splotches

and orbited by at least two moons one of

the strangest orbits of any kbo belongs

to sedna discovered in 2003 its orbit is

the most eccentric of any kbo now known

bringing it as close as 76 Au to the Sun

but then carrying it outward to

936 times the the Earth Sun distance

sedna's strange 11,000 year orbit seems

to link it to an even vaster cloud of

objects ready for exploration by Future

Generations the ort cloud is an immense

ice box of long period comets from 10 to

100 times more distant than the Kyper

belt surrounding All the known worlds of

our solar system there's a real record

of the early history of the solar system

out there in Cold Storage at the edge of

the solar system this is what was left

over Pluto is the first member of that

group but to begin Humanity's

exploration of the Kyper belt you first

have to get to Pluto and that means

getting a mission approved a spacecraft

designed and built and delivered to the

Launchpad on time and none of that was

[Music]

easy 2015 may be the year of Pluto but

getting there has taken many long years

effort and for New Horizons there's a

date when things got started

1989 it was the year when George Herbert

Walker Bush became president and the

Berlin Wall

fell far from Earth it was also the year

when NASA's Voyager spacecraft flew by

Neptune and returned the first images of

its Moon Triton

hairstyles of some New Horizon

scientists were very different but for

them May 5th 1989 was a most important

date that's the day that I marched into

the then division director for planetary

science at NASA headquarters Jeff Briggs

as a graduate student and asked him why

we aren't studying a mission to Pluto

and he responded because no one's ever

asked me before that seems like a

brilliant idea why don't we do that

space missions rely on hundreds if not

thousands of people but sometimes it

takes someone with passion and

persistence to make things happen and

for New Horizons that's Alan Stern I was

interested in this when I was a boy so

I've been somewhere between in the

groove and stuck in a rut for 40 years

there had been some thought about

sending one of the twin Voyager

spacecraft past Pluto to complete the

exploration of the known solar system

but in the '70s the scientific

establishment wasn't convinced Pluto was

all that interesting young grad students

mik Allen markk buoy and Fran bagenal

thought differently back in oh about

late 1989 or so there was a bunch of us

who were really Keen to go to Pluto and

the thing that Drew me to it the most

was the fact that we knew so little

here's the frontier so it was a bit of

an opportunity for young people to come

in and say hey where are we going to go

next what's the next great Frontier that

we should go explore and it was clear

out to the K Bel Allan Fram Mark and a

small band of enthusiasts became known

as the Pluto underground so we realized

to make this happen we had to get

together and Campaign hard to make the

case to go there and explore this little

planet with all its moons all through

the '90s there were many competing plans

for a Pluto mission like the Pluto fast

flyby the Pluto Kyper Express a Pluto

mission was on then off then on then off

the PLO Mission had been a cat it would

have been dead long ago because they

only get nine lives and we've had

significantly more than nine stoppages

and odd twists and turns what finally

turned the tide was the national

Academy's decadal survey a consensus

document from leading planetary

scientists that ranked a Kyper belt

Pluto mission highest in priority for

medium class budgets finally after

competitive proposals were evaluated New

Horizons which teamed alen Stern with

the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics

laboratory APL and several other in

institutions across the country was

selected by NASA on November 29th

2001 now plans on paper became metal in

clean rooms in 2004 lead scientist Alan

Stern described the mission's key

science objective well you know the key

to planetary science is um that you

really have to go places to get the

resolution to get up close enough to

really see what's going on we want to

get up close and personal the very best

resolution of current telescopes looking

at Pluto would give this kind of fuzzy

image of a much more familiar world but

here's what New Horizons would see if

flying over New York City lakes in

Central Park Wares on the Hudson River

your horizons is the first really of a

whole new breed of spacecraft that is

focusing on a very specific task for

this first mission to Pluto the

questions are basic what do Pluto and

Karen look like what are they made of

how do their atmospheres behave we have

to really be disciplined and say we

can't do everything let's focus on the

primary questions and design the

instruments to answer those primary

questions the long range imager lorri

will be used for navigation approaching

Pluto and close-up views during the

flyby the wide-angle camera Ralph has

both visible light and infrared sensors

to map Pluto and Caren and characterize

their icy surfaces there are two fields

and particles to detectors to probe the

solar wind at Pluto the large radio

antenna is an essential Communications

device but both Rex and Alice an

UltraViolet Imaging spectrometer are

part of experiments to analyze Pluto's

atmosphere and there's the Venicia

Bernie student dust counter built by

undergrads at UC Boulder and honoring

the school girl who named Pluto back in

1930 together the seven science

instruments comprise the most power

powerful set of detectors ever sent on a

first flyby of any world in our solar

system but their Innovative and highly

miniaturized design means that even when

all are operating they draw less power

than half a 60 W bulb and they're

intended to work together

seamlessly after building comes testing

but always with an eye on the clock and

the

calendar it's very very important that

we launch in either 2006 or 2007 we have

to make that deadline if you want to fly

to Pluto on the quickest route you need

Jupiter in position and that means we

have to launch in January of 2006 it

feels a little bit like being strapped

to a train going 500 mph the test

program involves teams of Engineers at

John's Hopkins APL and then at NASA's GD

space flight center once we launched

this we can't go after with a

screwdriver we can't go fix anything

that isn't working we make sure that we

carry plenty of spare equipment on board

the spacecraft if our main computer

breaks we have a backup if our main

transmitter breaks we have a backup one

of the things we do is we put the whole

spacecraft on a gigantic vibration table

a paint Shaker and shake it and and then

test it after that and shake it again

and test it again so that's what we're

doing from now until launch along with

testing the spacecraft New Horizons

needs to train and test its human

operators and for a mission planned to

reach Pluto in 2015 15 it's important to

have young people on board early so

they'll be around a close approach it's

good that we can do that so they will

have both the time the focus to stay

with the mission over this long period

of time many of the faces you see around

mission control in 2004 and 2005 are

young and enthusiastic spacecraft

Engineers normally we're focused on

subsystems and instruments in the

spacecraft surviving that duration but

you know for people we have to have a

longevity plan they'd be committing the

prime of their careers to this mission

to Pluto knowing they'd be a decade

older when New Horizons reaches its

primary target the ability to practice

things in those years far out there are

all part of the planning now to assure

Mission success then how old are you

going to be in

2015 I don't know something somewhere in

my 40s oh you're a youngster yes

in late 2005 the action shifts to Cape

Canaveral New Horizons may be light and

relatively small but launching it to

Pluto requires America's most powerful

rocket the atlas

5 New Horizons will be traveling so far

from the Sun that solar panels wouldn't

be sufficient so the department of

energy delivered an RTG that would power

the Pluto mission by turning heat from

the radioactive decay of pluton I onium

into

electricity working Round the Clock they

arrive at pad 41 Before Dawn on behalf

of NASA and the entire New Horizon's

team Stern wanted to be the last to bid

the spacecraft bonvoyage before closing

up the hatch on January 19th 2006 after

17 years of planning building and

testing a picture perfect launch that

thrilled onlookers in Florida and the

mission operations team back at John's

Hopkins in Maryland we

have

Horizon vo visit Pluto and then beyond

despite immense Technical and timetable

challenges the mission had made its

window and was on its way New Horizon's

velocity at launch was the fastest ever

traveling almost 60 times faster than a

jetliner in just 9 hours it passed the

orbit of of the Moon Apollo had taken

almost 10 times that long one year later

a slingshot gravity assist from the

giant planet Jupiter provided another 2

km/ second boost cutting travel time to

Pluto by three full years but this was

more than just a jump in speed the

Jupiter flyby was a scientific dress

rehearsal for Pluto New Horizon's

instruments returned detailed images of

Jupiter's clouds moons and

we got the night wow look at that then

it was off across the empty ocean of

space with no new land in sight till

Pluto in

2015 the spacecraft had been tested and

passed with flying colors now it was

time to test the humans and the ground

systems July 5th 2013 it's day one of a

9-day encounter rehearsal the main

success criteria for this rehearsal

is for the spacecraft to flawlessly

perform its activities as if it were a

pluta with everything the same except

the Pluto is not

there the dates in 2013 were carefully

chosen so that Earth received times

would be identical to those for the real

encounter in

2015 Mission managers wanted scientists

and Engineers to experience the stress

of time critical 247 operations EXP Ed

for July 2015 we're flying by an object

that is a huge distance from Earth and

we're trying to hit a box that's 100 by

150 km wide and that then leads into

maneuver planning and and trajectory

control needed to thread that that

needle and hit that small box it's way

the heck out there this rehearsal would

actually be uploading commands to New

Horizons to instruct the spacecraft to

run through the exact same set of

observations as in 2015 there definitely

is an element of risk involved but from

one standpoint if you didn't do any

simulation with the real spacecraft at

all you could argue that could POS more

risk because you don't want such a

critical activity only being done once

on flight those are all invaluable to

get us ready and and practiced for the

one and only shot we'll have to explore

the Pluto system we've been waiting uh

12 years since we wrote the proposals to

do this rehearsal it's the last big step

before we can do the encounter we think

that we are about 10 million miles out

from Pluto en closing but so far so good

we're off to the

[Music]

races today is our

2724 day in flight this has been a long

time coming literally I only want to say

thanks for all the work let them eat

[Music]

cake July 12th 2013 standing in for July

14th

2015 this is it a minute by minute

simulation of encounter day

it's maker

break well it's it's the most important

because we've best been spending the 24

hours of the most intense activities

that we've been running on the

spacecraft and this is the longest that

we've been out of contact since we've

entered encounter rehearsal this may be

a rehearsal but New Horizons has been

firing its thrusters and spinning in

space identical Maneuvers to those

planned for

2015 on encounter day the spacecraft

will be too busy taking data to send

back images that's why its first simple

I'm alive message will be so

important sometime within the next

minute DSS 43 should lock up on the

signal we're we're good we're nominal

spacecraft's nominal and it looks like

um all the observations that plan

between last track and this track

happened this gives us good confidence

that at least the spacecraft has been

performing all of those twists and turns

that we've been anticipating it to over

the last uh 7 days I like to say that at

the flyby I don't want to be learning

anything about the ground system or the

spacecraft of the team I want to be

learning only about the Pluto system no

spacecraft has ever been to Pluto or nor

will ever go back in our lifetime Pluto

is every child's favorite planet you

know you ask anyone under the age of six

they're going to say Pluto we don't

exactly know what Pluto looks like but

it looks very exciting from the images

we have from the Hubble Space Telescope

so far we really can't wait to get there

and see what it actually looks like so

if anybody says that Pluto is boring or

not important no way before New Horizons

arrives at Pluto most everything we

think we know about the planet and its

moons is up for grabs virtually every

place we've set a spacecraft on a first

reconnaissance mission like this that we

find out that our earth-based Notions

were flat wrong

so I'll tell you what we expect but I

before anything what we expect is to be

surprised from the 1990s through today

Stern has been consistent in avoiding

speculation you get the same answer

everybody's gotten from me for almost 20

years I don't make predictions except

for one my best guess is we're going to

find something wonderful but in the

final months leading up to the July 2015

encounter it's hard for most humans not

to imagine what we'll see many planetary

scientists like Paul shank base their

expectations and what we saw when

Voyager 2 reached Neptune and

specifically as it flew by its Moon

Triton Voyager was a 10e long

exploration of the outer solar system

and every time they got to a planet it

was basically the first time anybody had

really seen those bodies so when they

got to Jupiter they were greeted with

enormous surprises the erupting

volcanoes on on I were just completely

unexpected and so when they got to

Uranus there were more surprises the

Exotic trains of of Miranda and Ariel

for example were not expected so by the

time they got to Neptune they were kind

of accustomed to the idea that they were

going to be surprised and sure enough uh

Triton uh completely blew them away

Bonnie barate was at NASA's jet

propulsion lab as the first images of

Triton a moon of nearly 1,700 M diameter

came down Triton was almost a twin of

Pluto it's about the same size about the

same brightness originally Triton was

probably a Kyer belt object just like

Pluto floating around in space but then

it got too close to Neptune and it got

captured by Neptune's gravitational

field recently Paul shank enhanced the

original Voyager data to create this

detailed flyover of Triton it has odd

patches and odd blob like features kind

of like amibas crawling around on the

surface Triton has very few impact

crators it's surface is extremely young

geologically and it actually has ge's

spting Material off into space here is a

body that is hundreds of degrees below

zero so cold it's forlorn it's Barren we

just didn't expect to see this activity

on Triton it was quite a surprise if you

just assume that Pluto was going to look

exactly like Triton which is the most

similar object we know about then you

might expect to find a very interesting

body but Triton is not not the only

Dynamic ice world in the outer solar

system 16 years later the Cassini

spacecraft sent back images of Saturn's

moon Enceladus about 300 mes across this

is a tiny little Moon and Enceladus is

actually a winter wonderland it's very

bright it reflects almost all the

radiation that falls on it and it has

these huge ice volcanoes spewing out

from its s South Pole and Enceladus is

continuously giving off per of water

vapor and so if you start to see puffs

of water vapor coming off Pluto as newc

Horizons gets closer that would be

exceedingly interesting but what forces

can power volcanoes in the Deep Freeze

of the outer solar system Triton and

Pluto are both balls of ice with

presumably Rock in the center and so one

of the sources of energy is radioactive

decay inside the rock which gives off

heat just like the Earth is heated if

you just let Pluto sit there and pump

the heat out of the Rocks you you

generate enough energy to melt a couple

of hundred kmers worth of ice it's still

possible to have an ocean beneath a

relatively thick ice shell the ice shell

might be 100 miles thick or so over

billions of years the ice shell gets

thicker and thicker and thicker as Pluto

cools and as it does so it squeezes the

water underneath and if you squeeze the

water too much then it may well actually

create fractures and the water could jet

out to the surface when you're going out

to the edge of the solar system you kind

of have to expect some surprises and

we're going to see them at Pluto as well

just as tridon and Enceladus were mere

dots before spacecraft reached them

until now Pluto has been an astronomer's

Planet that's about the change we are

going to start off as astronomers and

we'll be using astronomical tools to um

try and sharpen up our images and pull

every last little bit of detail out of

these fuzzy blobs we gradually turn from

astronomers into GE ologists as we get

closer and it becomes a real world Jeff

Moore was in the room at JPL as those

Triton images came down but he also

enjoys field work and thinks we'll

recognize some similar planetary

processes at work on Pluto as back on

Earth so I'm a geologist and although we

don't expect to see oceans on Pluto

there are common processes which operate

on this planet which are likely to

operate also on Pluto and its moons

while the scales are very different

erosion shapes landforms here on Earth

and all across the solar system there

are these little finger-like projections

that are formed by the process of

erosion where wind and water have

sculpted this landscape by taking

advantage of small differences in the

strength of the original Rock creating

large huge fantastic Landscapes such as

on Jupiter's moon Kalisto and we can

anticipate that we may perhaps also see

Landscapes like this on Pluto and its

moons Pluto's 48-year orbit is more

eccentric than our Solar System's

terrestrial and gas giant planets

greatly varying its distance to the Sun

but it's typical of many other objects

in the Kyper belt and newly discovered

planets around other

stars that plus its highly angled polar

tilt combined to produce strong seasonal

effects in fact the seasons of Pluto are

amongst the most extreme of any seasons

on any world that we know of orbiting

the Sun and those extremes may be one

reason why its surface is also extremely

contrasty Pluto is props the most

intensely bright and dark place that

we've seen in the solar system this dark

surface collects more heat it warms up

like asphalt does on a sunny day here on

the earth and if there were Frost had

settled on this dark surface they're

being heated up and driven off and the

transportation of this material could

also be creating wind so you might see

small Dunes oriented along the periphery

of the dark surface showing this process

in action for planetary scientists color

can be a clue to the composition of

surfaces that can't be sampled directly

on the earth these kinds of colors from

red to uh dark gray are generated

entirely by the presence or absence of

rust on Pluto we see also these same

ranges of colors from Gray to bright

white to Yellow to Red to black but

there it must be due to a completely

different process at NASA's as research

center near San FRC Frisco longtime

Pluto researcher Dale Kook shank and

postto Chris mes conduct experiments to

see what processes might create the

colors we see on Pluto starting with

gases like methane and nitrogen and the

extreme low temperatures we know or

found there in our cold chamber we can

produce a thin film of ice and then

after that expose them to a beam of

electrons which are charged particles

comparable to what comes in to Pluto's

surface from space

we find that when we U shine ultraviolet

light or electrons on simple molecules

before too long the simple molecules are

broken apart and by natural processes

they reassemble into more complex

chemicals so far the colors we make in

the lab from radiating these IES is uh

is fairly close to what we see on Pluto

there are tones of yellow light brown up

through fairly dark red and if we care

the processing by ultraviolet light to

an extreme degree uh the material

actually turns black and this is almost

the color of of pure carbon seeing how

radiation transforms simple I into

complex and colorful organic molecules

should help interpret the close-up views

of Pluto's surface that'll be sent back

by New Horizons color translates to the

duration of the exposure of these

otherwise colorless IES over a year

10,000 years 10 million years that may

in turn tell us more about the nature of

the exposure of Pluto's surface and even

the age of Pluto's surface Dale

Crookshank began observing Pluto back in

1976 now 39 years later he's ready for

its closeup we can say that Pluto is

chemically active chemically Dynamic we

don't know yet if it's geologically

active and dynamic but that's what new

Horizons is going to tell us we've been

surprised in that way before as we've

passed other planetary bodies that we

had thought were totally cold dead um

inert worlds and find that there are

geysers there are ice flows there are

cracks and all kinds of evidence for

geological activity I can still remember

the first time I saw Pluto in a

telescope and it was just a little dot

that you could barely see it will be

amazing that within a period of hours it

will be transformed from this tiny dot

that I studied as an astronomer to this

huge geologic world that will be able to

see volcanoes and faults and ices and

mountains and craters I mean it will be

truly an amazing experience to see it

transformed so from sophisticated lab

experiments from exploring other worlds

and from applying insights from

terrestrial processes what should we

expect when we get to Pluto in July

2015 fact the only thing that would

surprise me would be if we turned out

not to be surprised but enjoying the

scientific surprises to come means

avoiding dangers on the last few million

miles to

Pluto that's

next December 6th

2014 in Mission Control Alice Bowman and

her team wait to get confirmation that

New Horizons has exited what's called

hibernation for 2/3 of its 3 billion

mile Journey most spacecraft systems

have been turned off saving wear and

tear on the science instruments New

Horizon sends a simple signal once a

week just to say I'm still AOK Alice's

team has a unique way of showing

spacecraft status when New Horizons is

hibernating their bare mascot is safely

asleep when the spacecraft wakes up they

put on its party hat if all goes well

this will be the 18th time spacecraft

and Bear have woken up but December 2014

is different VIPs from NASA are on hand

two film Crews document the action as

Allan explains the benefits of

hibernation um it lowers our cost

because we don't need to have people

babysitting the spacecraft 24/7 outside

interest in New Horizons is building if

all goes well New Horizons will stay

awake flying by Pluto and in July 2015

and then returning data until October

2016 copy that thank you

GNC tonight data trickles in and Alice

has to wait to be certain New Horizons

is fully awake we should be getting it

momentarily it should be any minute now

this is like watching paint dry I figure

if I stare at the screen hard enough

and packet five just came in there we go

go P PN mom on Pluto

1 we have a nominal wake up of the New

Horizon spacecraft on its way to

Pluto we're ready for our next leg of

the

journey was

awake ah our bear he's going to be here

for a while this is a shed day we have

completed the cruise across 3 billion

miles of space the spacecraft is now

awake finally after 9 years I'm glad to

see hibernation behind us and active Ops

ahead onto Pluto but there are still

hundreds of tasks to ensure a safe flyby

in July

2015 January 27th New Horizons has been

sending back technical data and all

seems fine but today is the first time

Hal Weaver and Andy Chen will be seeing

new science images I thought I saw it

pop up here let's try that again Chang

is lead scientist for the Lori camera

Lori is used for navigation to find the

targets and to correct the trajectory so

we get to the right place at the right

time voltages currents temperatures all

look normal uh no error messages this is

it uh let's let's check out the uh very

first images and then

Sharon right there Pete pixel

okay all right so there they are let's

look at the whole for project scientist

Hal Weaver even the jump in size from

one to two pixels was significant this

is a real milestone in the New Horizons

Mission the very first images of Pluto

in the Pluto encounter year uh hadn't

turned loran hadn't gotten any images

since last summer last July but this is

it this is the start of it AR she blue

we really don't know what we're going to

see that's what this mission is all

about what is the surface of Pluto

really like how big is it what are the

orbits really so it's nothing but

delightful surprises coming for us but

some of the surprises may not be quite

so welcome as New Horizons get still

closer to the Pluto system Lori will be

able to identify small moons and

possible rings that can't be seen from

Earth John Spencer is leading the uaz

campaign uaz stands for unknown hazards

we may found new moons or even rings

around Pluto and if we see anything like

that we're going to want to determine

whether it poses a threat to the

spacecraft because if it does if there's

debris that we might run into that might

damage or kill the spacecraft then we

want to uh evaluate that Hazard and

determine whether we should take any

evasive action to find out just how

vulnerable New Horizons might be to even

tiny dust particles the mission sent

samples of spacecraft components to the

White Sands test

range technicians at White Sands set up

gun tests to assess how vulnerable New

Horizon's outer covers and cables might

be we went to two facilities that could

shoot things into parts of models of the

spacecraft while the results might look

dangerous the Mission has options to

take evasive

action one of the backup strategies we

have if we feel we need give the

spacecraft Extra Protection is that we

Orient it so that the High Gain antenna

here which is um literally pretty

bulletproof and can protect the

spacecraft is going to be facing forward

in the ram Direction and this is ram in

the sense of battering ram it's a

direction in which stuff will be coming

at us and ramming into the spacecraft

and if that is facing forward then any

dust particles that hit the spacecraft

are most likely to hit that antenna

where they won't cause US problems and

only a small part of the spacecraft

around the edges is going to be exposed

to those particles that would protect

the guts of the spacecraft but limit the

pointing of the cameras the cameras are

fixed to the spacecraft so if the

spacecraft has to point in One Direction

the cameras can only point in a limited

range of directions this limits the

amount of times we can photograph the

system as we go past because we can only

photog objects when they're just in the

right angle that we can look at them

while protecting the spacecraft with the

main antenna another option is to take

different trajectories through the Pluto

system that's called the Shabbat play

Shabbat is the best acronym in the space

business it stands for Safe Haven by

other trajectory and it is is the word

we use to represent our backup plans at

Pluto the second Shabbat takes us much

closer to Pluto um into the region where

atmospheric drag uh depletes orbits of

any debris which we think would be uh

the safest Hail Mary pass that we could

fly if we have to do something different

than the nominal we are coming into the

Pluto system with the ability if we

learn something we don't expect to be

able to make uh a change and uh and get

the goods but those decisions can only

be made in the last month before closest

approach and there'll be limited time to

evaluate the best options so in February

20 2015 Spencer's uaz team including

ring specialist Mark shalter and postto

Simon Porter are running through a

Readiness test now they're on the clock

and being scored for whether they can

work through the calculations fast

enough to decide on a trajectory

correction maneuver that might prevent

loss of mission and that makes this

exercise more critical than any that

have gone before the difference between

this and previous operational Readiness

tests is is that this is where we have

to demonstrate to the project of NASA

that we can do this but the only test

that really matters comes on July 14th

2015 that one day will pay off 26 years

of dreams and 9 years in

[Music]

flight for the science team the year of

Pluto began with another meeting to

review the latest data on the Pluto

system and to hear updates on how the

spacecraft was performing Mission

manager Glenn Fountain who'd been with

the project from its start summarized

remaining risks red boxes are

possibilities that could kill the

mission but now in 2015 there are more

and more green boxes risks that have

been minimized something that we haven't

thought of still might happen but I'm

confident that whatever happens whatever

fate throws at us this team will be able

to resolve it and we'll go on to get

wonderful data when we get to Pluto we

have a fantastically talented team of

people who have worked very hard and

we've tested the sequences inside and

out and while there are always unknown

unknowns I'm very confident and really

looking forward to the curtain Rising

along with mindbending technical details

there also was a sense of history in the

making to document the long years of

effort to get this close to Pluto the

mission recreated a team photograph

taken in

2004 as Glenn Allan and Alice had

carefully planned back then many of the

scientists and Engineers were still

actively engaged in New Horizons and

looking forward to July

2015 we have worked hard to get a

coherent team because if you don't have

a good team to operate the spacecraft to

do the planning you will

fail and so we worked a plan early in

the mission to have younger people uh

with the right amount of

experience to be on the mission and it's

just like watching your kids grow it's

like all of a

sudden where did the time go you know

they are older they're more mature and

they're now the the very experienced

veterans but the hard work of mission

planning was by no means over even this

close to encounter day while exploring

Pluto in 2015 is exciting in itself New

Horizons was recommended in part as a

mission that might continue on farther

out into the Kyper belt that takes

identifying potential targets now for a

still more distant flyby should NASA

approve an extended Mission this

challenging task was assigned to John

Spencer Mark Buie and a team of young

posts and like everything else about

this Mission it wasn't easy Buie and

John Spencer had been using Earth's

largest telescopes in Hawaii and Chile

but even Earth's Best couldn't crack

this task but the basic problem is the

Earth's atmosphere is just a a mess at

these scales there's a limit and that's

what we've been beating our heads

against now with time running out we had

to turn to Hubble and so it's we sort of

not so jokingly talk about Hubble to the

rescue without Hubble we would not have

these objects Mark and his young

collaborators came up with Innovative

search techniques using custom software

what that does is makes the Stars smear

out and makes the Kyper Bel objects hold

still it's been a lot of work but to do

something as exciting as this has been

just so much fun I've been plugging

through the data today because it's

fresh data and I just really really

wanted to to know what the answer was

well we would have been in big trouble

if we didn't find the kbo in time so

there was this pressure but honestly we

had the best people in the world working

on the problem and we did it and we just

do the math write the software crunch

the pixels and then I create this

graphic and from that point on it's what

I call wetwear it's what you got in your

head in reality kbos are moving against

the fixed Stars Mark came up with a way

of making them more obvious by flipping

that around and making the stars appear

to move and any kbos stand still right

in the middle there's something that's

just holding dead

constant and that's the Kyper belt

option you can't argue with that it was

a high- tech variant of the approach

that had been instrumental in exploring

the Pluto system right from the start

but at the core it's a technique that

hasn't really changed since tombow's day

you have two pictures of the sky taken

in different times and you're looking

for the stuff that moves as soon as you

see something real there is absolutely

no question about it as soon as it

flashes on the screen in just a

millisecond there it is it's real and

you know I found another kyber bolt

object but finding a kbo is only half

the battle is it located where New

Horizons can reach it with available

fuel once you have the orbit then we and

we know where the spacecraft is and

where it's going to be we can figure out

how much fuel the spacecraft is going to

need to use to get to the these objects

with more Hubble time New Horizons got a

pleasant surprise it looked like we

might actually have to burn the engines

to miss the

object which was pretty exciting concept

you know it's good thing we looked cuz

you wouldn't want to run into one of

these things these cold classicals

they're pretty much as they were 4.5

billion years ago they're little fossils

that's incredible we have no idea what

they're going to look like so with

potential targets found at last it was

on the Pluto I'm feeling pretty

exhilarated at this point you know

you're at the top of the roller coaster

you were about to go down that dizzying

thrilling uh ride into the system just

seeing Pluto there getting bigger and

bigger it's gives me goosebumps today

we're only a few months away from the en

counter we're less than an astronomical

unit the distance between the Earth and

the Sun that distance away from this

fascinating object it's the last major

body in our solar system that we really

need to visit to be putting the Capstone

on the initial reconnaissance of the

solar system it's heartwarming and it it

feels like something that makes a career

worthwhile as spacecraft goes New

Horizons is a very small team but still

we've been working on this for over a

decade and you add it all up and it's

about 2 and 1/2 million work hours to

get ourselves to Pluto we have waited

first the four years that we couldn't

hardly think about because we were

running so fast and then it is oh we

wait and we wait and now we are ready to

begin the encounter we have had delayed

gratification the year of Pluto is you

know simultaneously a beginning and an

ending um it's an ending in that we are

uh completing our objective we're

accomplishing the flyby of the Pluto

system for the first time but it's also

the beginning of a whole new chapter for

science of really being able to explore

these objects as the data comes down

over a period of months you know in

bringing in postdocs and the younger

scientists who some of them were in high

school when we started this project and

now they have their phds and they are

spectacular experts and and very

talented at what they do I was in

preschool when Allan first started

talking about a Pluto mission and

finishing high school and starting

College when it was built and in grad

school for the cruise having young

people come into these programs gaining

The Experience they're going to be the

next generation of explorers we've never

been to a kbo we've never been anywhere

close to a kbo this this is the the most

unexplored area of the entire solar

system which is in other wayse saying

this is the most unknown area that we as

humans can reach with spacecraft we

can't wait to get to Pluto and to July

14th and see what the surface looks like

we're ready to go and it's showtime we

are capable of continuing an adventure

that Humanity began 100,000 years ago as

our ancestors Walked Out Of Africa and

we are continuing that

exploration and this country is in the

Forefront of doing that

[Music]

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The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System