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posted by CoolHand on Monday May 11 2015, @08:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-pluto-than-goofy dept.

On May 11, the first spacecraft ever to visit Pluto will begin looking for tiny debris as it approaches the dwarf planet at 48,000 kph:

To minimize the risk of hitting debris from Charon or another, unknown moon, scientists will conduct seven 45-minute observation sessions between 11 May and 1 July. If they find a potential hazard, the team can change the spacecraft's course.

...The mission is almost certain to discover new moons in the process. The Hubble Space Telescope found two during its hazard searches before the Pluto mission: Kerberos, which measures 14-40 kilometres across, in 2011, and the smaller Styx in 2012.

If something dangerous is spotted, 4 July is the last chance to divert the spacecraft to one of three available alternate routes.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by hubie on Monday May 11 2015, @05:55PM

    by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 11 2015, @05:55PM (#181552) Journal

    In 1989 my friend and I went to a science museum for the Voyager encounter with Neptune so that we could see the live feed on NASA TV (it was the only place we could find that carried the feed). It was fun and exciting to see the imagery come in at the same time mission ops was seeing it. I'm very glad I did it.

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