YouTube Transcript:
The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
View:
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
in
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
of
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
55
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]
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms
Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!
YouTube
←
→
↻
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
YoutubeToText
←
→
↻
https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc