After six weeks of relative quiet
from New Horizons scientists as
they recovered from the probe’s
historic flyby of the Pluto sys-
tem July 14, they got back to
work over Labor Day weekend.
The first images returned from a
scheduled yearlong downlink of
data continue to show a more
complex world than anyone
ever imagined. “Pluto is show-
ing us a diversity of landforms
and complexity of processes
that rival anything we’ve seen in
the solar system,” says Principal
Investigator Alan Stern of the
Southwest Research Institute in
Boulder, Colorado. “If an artist
had painted this Pluto before
our flyby, I probably would have
called it over the top — but
that’s what’s actually there.”
Among the most intriguing
features revealed are some
smooth, dark regions that
could be wind-blown dunes.
“Seeing dunes on Pluto — if
that is what they are — would
be completely wild becausePluto’s atmosphere is so thin,”
says New Horizons team mem-
ber William B. McKinnon of
Washington University in St.
Louis. “Either Pluto had a thicker
atmosphere in the past, or some
process we haven’t figured out
is at work. It’s a head-scratcher.”
And even as New Horizons
continues to send back stored
data from the flyby, the space-
craft is already preparing for
the next phase of its mission —
assuming it gets NASA approval.
The probe was designed to go
beyond Pluto to explore at least
one other icy body in the Kuiper
Belt, but at the time of launch
in 2006, any future targets were
a mystery. In 2014, the Hubble
Space Telescope uncovered five
potential Kuiper Belt objects
(KBOs) for New Horizons to
explore, and on August 28,
NASA selected one, designated
2014 MU 69 , based on the mis-
sion team’s recommendation.
The 30-mile-wide (45 kilome-
ters) KBO lies nearly a billionmiles beyond Pluto and likely
formed where it now orbits.
Selecting New Horizons’
next target right after the Pluto
flyby was necessary in order for
the spacecraft to start making
maneuvers before the end of
the year to put it on the right
trajectory without wasting fuel.
Still, mission scientists need
further approval to conductactual science during a flyby. In
the coming year, they will sub-
mit a proposal to NASA request-
ing funding for this extended
mission as part of the space
agency’s planetary science
portfolio. If after an indepen-
dent review NASA provides the
go-ahead, New Horizons will
explore 2014 MU 69 on January 1,- — K. F.
A COMPLICATED
PICTURE OF PLUTO
OLD AND NEW. This 220-mile-wide (350 kilometers) view of Pluto’s surface shows
many intriguing features, including dark ridges that resemble dunes (upper left and
right) and ancient, heavily cratered terrain jutting up against smooth and therefore rela-
tively young areas. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRIVIEW FROM ABOVE. This perspective
shows what it would be like to look down
at Pluto from 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers)
above its surface. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI