{"id":84032,"date":"2015-07-15T07:15:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T04:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/blog\/1st-visit-to-dwarf-planet-pluto\/"},"modified":"2015-07-15T07:15:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T04:15:29","slug":"1st-visit-to-dwarf-planet-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/en\/blog\/1st-visit-to-dwarf-planet-pluto\/","title":{"rendered":"1st Visit to Dwarf Planet Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years to the day after the visit to Mars: the first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto<\/b><\/h4>\n

This afternoon, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass over Pluto and will send valuable information to the planet Earth. Members of the research team of Prof. Hagai Perets from the Technion, who are studying Pluto and its moons, believe that this information will greatly contribute to our knowledge about that distant region of the solar system. The spacecraft, which contains scientific equipment and the ashes of the man who discovered Pluto, will continue to head toward Pluto\u2019s moon, and from there to the edge of the solar system.<\/b><\/h4>\n
\"Prof.<\/a>
Prof. Hagai Perets<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Within a few hours – just before 15:00, to be more precise – the New Horizons spacecraft will fly by the closest point to the dwarf planet Pluto. Shortly thereafter, it will pass over Charon – Pluto\u2019s main moon – and then it will proceed to the edge of the solar system.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s anticipated historic \u201cvisit\u201d will occur exactly 50 years after the first pictures from the surface of Mars reached the Earth. On July 14, 1965, humanity discovered for the first time what the surface of a planet that is not Earth looks like. Since then, all the other planets, except Pluto, have been studied.<\/p>\n

60,000 km\/h<\/b>.<\/h4>\n

Therefore – in order to explore Pluto – New Horizons was launched around nine years ago. The spacecraft, weighing about 500 kilograms, soared into space at a record speed of nearly 60,000 km\/h. To save energy, it was then \u201cput to sleep\u201d for a few years and only last December did it \u201cwake up\u201d in order to be able to transmit the information from the vicinity of Pluto. These transmissions began a few months ago, and provided Earth with considerable information and wonderful pictures.<\/p>\n

From Mars to Pluto. <\/b><\/h4>\n

For decades, Pluto, discovered in 1930, was considered one of the major planets in the solar system. Since then, all the other planets have been \u201cvisited\u201d by spacecraft, which photographed them, and therefore today\u2019s closure is a historic moment. Many people around the world will hold their breath today – even those born long after the \u201cvisit\u201d to Mars on July 14, 1965. Two of them are Prof. Hagi Perets and doctoral student Erez Michaeli, from the Technion Faculty of Physics, who are studying the \u201cpotential moons\u201d that may be discovered around Pluto.<\/p>\n

\u201cPluto was discovered in 1930,\u201d Michaeli explains, \u201cand only in 1978 was its main moon, Charon, discovered. In the past decade, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, four other moons orbiting Pluto on the same plane have been discovered. This gave rise to the question: Does Pluto have more<\/b> moons?\u201d<\/p>\n

Potential moons.<\/b><\/h4>\n

In the joint article, Michaeli and Prof. Perets predict the possible locations of other potential moons. \u201cWe do not presume to say whether there are such moons, but only \u2018map\u2019 the areas where they might be located,\u201d explains Michaeli. \u201cOur mapping is based on the information provided and a set of equations, and we predict that if such moons are found, they will be within the area that we \u2018permit\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you were wrong? <\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cAs an astrophysicist, I really want new things to be discovered, so I would be very happy if moons are found in those places as well. Of course, it would mean that we failed to take something into consideration, but to some extent that would be even more interesting. After all, that\u2019s the one of the beauties of science – surprises tell us more than the success of our predictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Star is born. <\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cThe discovery of other moons may help us better understand how Pluto was formed,\u201d says Michaeli. \u201cThe currently accepted theory in the astrophysics community is that Pluto is the result of an accidental collision of two celestial objects, and some of the debris became its moons, but simulations show that the impact speed was abnormally slow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collision of a celestial body with its moon occurs at a relatively slow speed,\u201d says Prof. Perets, \u201cand now we\u2019re working on a new model in which Pluto was hit by one of its remote moons. Such a collision could explain what we see today. According to this model, the current moons were formed by a collision between Pluto and one of its ancient moons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The internal structure. <\/b><\/h4>\n

Dr. Uri Malamud, one of Prof. Perets\u2019s post-doctoral students, is focusing in his research on the development of the bodies in solar system and their internal structure. \u00a0\u201cSince we have no direct data from inside <\/b>these planetary bodies, we have to infer the internal structure from various observations and the measurement of density, gravitational field, magnetic field, surface composition and various geological formations that may be an indication of the processes taking place inside. In the case of Pluto and Charon, the density was known previously, which gives a pretty good initial indication regarding the possible internal composition, but now we can improve the existing measurements and obtain detailed information about the surface composition and geological formations. In our study, we rely on assumptions pertaining to the conditions that prevailed when these bodies were formed, and run advanced computer simulations that simulate Pluto\u2019s evolution during 4.5 billion years.\u201d<\/p>\n

A glimpse into the past. <\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cOf course one can ask why anyone should even bother studying a lump rock located at the edge of the solar system,\u201d says Prof. Perets, \u201cbut from a scientific perspective, there is tremendous motivation here. Pluto and similar objects give us a unique opportunity to explore the first building blocks of the solar system, some of which have been preserved almost unchanged. Pluto gives us a look at the birth pangs of the solar system and the origin of the planet Earth, and now we are seeing it live.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an article published together with Prof. Dina Prialnik from Tel Aviv University in the journal Icarus, Dr. Malamud assumes that Charon and other bodies in the Kuiper Belt were \u201cborn\u201d from a homogeneous composition of rock and ice, and later developed as a result of warming that led to the flow of water and gas through a porous medium characteristic of small bodies in the solar system. \u201cThese dwarf planets have fairly regular structures – an ice shell covering a rocky core – but their level of porosity varies. In our article, we showed that this difference stems from their different masses.\u201d In a follow-on study conducted by Dr. Malamud and Prof. Perets, they are trying to expand their previous study, so that it will be possible to perform simulations of larger bodies like Pluto, partly in light of the new information obtained from New Horizons.<\/p>\n

Pluto and the New Horizons mission<\/b><\/h4>\n

New Horizons was launched from Earth on January 19, 2006 – at that time Pluto was still considered one of the nine planets of the solar system – and since then it has covered nearly 5 billion kilometers. During its journey, the spacecraft moved so far from the sun that it cannot generate electricity from sunlight. Therefore, a small plutonium-based nuclear reactor was installed onboard.<\/p>\n

New Horizons was designed, built and launched in order to \u201cunderstand the worlds at the edge of the solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a relic of the formation of the solar system.\u201d In addition to scientific equipment, the spacecraft carries several objects, including a coin of the State of Florida; an urn containing the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930; a Pluto postage stamp from 1991; and, of course, an American flag.<\/p>\n

Pluto was considered one of the nine planets in the solar system until 2006 – the year when it was deposed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and defined as \u201conly\u201d a dwarf planet. Several reasons were given for the decision, which was made despite protests by many astronomers: Pluto\u2019s size (it is smaller than many bodies in the solar system that were discovered in recent years and are defined as planets); the unusual fact that Pluto and its principal moon, Charon, are not very different from each other in size; Pluto, unlike \u201creal\u201d planets, doesn\u2019t remove particles and larger objects from its environment; and, finally – Pluto\u2019s orbit is unusual compared to that of our known planets, all of which move around the sun on an ecliptic plane. The plane of Pluto\u2019s movement around the sun is at a deviation of around 17 degrees from the ecliptic plane, and it self-rotates at a 119 degree angle from that plane, which means that it self-rotates in one direction and orbits around the sun in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Pluto was discovered by Tombaugh in 1930, and received its name in a public competition – the winning name was proposed by an 11-year-old girl. Because of its distance from the sun – around 6 billion kilometers on average – its surface has a very low temperature: around -220\u2070C. Because of its very long orbit, a \u201cPluto year\u201d is equal to 248 of our years. Pluto\u2019s orbit is very elliptical, unlike most of the planets, and this causes strange phenomena: when it\u2019s far from the sun it\u2019s completely frozen and has no atmosphere, and when it draws near it heats up and substances evaporate from its surface, thereby creating the atmosphere, and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years to the day after the visit to Mars: the first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto This afternoon, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass over Pluto and will send valuable information to the planet Earth. Members of the research team of Prof. Hagai Perets from the Technion, who are studying Pluto and its… Continue Reading 1st Visit to Dwarf Planet Pluto<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n1st Visit to Dwarf Planet Pluto - \u05d4\u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5\u05df-\u05de\u05db\u05d5\u05df \u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d5\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/en\/blog\/1st-visit-to-dwarf-planet-pluto\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"1st Visit to Dwarf Planet Pluto - \u05d4\u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5\u05df-\u05de\u05db\u05d5\u05df \u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d5\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fifty years to the day after the visit to Mars: the first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto This afternoon, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass over Pluto and will send valuable information to the planet Earth. 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