Finding Pluto is really New Horizon’s biggest problem
As New Horizons speeds towards its planned fly-by of Pluto on July 14, the biggest problem faced by its engineers is making sure the spacecraft actually finds and photographs the planet.
Because astronomers discovered the dwarf planet in 1930, they have seen only part of its 248-year path around the Sun, and they don’t know exactly where Pluto is. And New Horizons is so far from Earth that it takes 9 hours to send and receive a signal, making the spacecraft hard to direct in real time. “Everything is pushed to the extreme,” says Bobby Williams, an engineer at KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California, who heads the mission’s navigation team.
This fact, which has not been mentioned previously as far as I remember, suggests that there is a good chance that New Horizons might fly through its planned window and aim its cameras at the wrong spot in the sky, missing Pluto entirely. It also explains partly why the images released so far have been so fuzzy: They are focused mostly on doing navigation work, and are taking wide angle shots to make sure they catch Pluto in their picture frame. Zooming in too close might actually miss Pluto as they don’t exactly know where it is.
All this only makes the July 14th fly-by even more exciting. Let us hope they do due diligence and get the pictures we all want!
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As New Horizons speeds towards its planned fly-by of Pluto on July 14, the biggest problem faced by its engineers is making sure the spacecraft actually finds and photographs the planet.
Because astronomers discovered the dwarf planet in 1930, they have seen only part of its 248-year path around the Sun, and they don’t know exactly where Pluto is. And New Horizons is so far from Earth that it takes 9 hours to send and receive a signal, making the spacecraft hard to direct in real time. “Everything is pushed to the extreme,” says Bobby Williams, an engineer at KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California, who heads the mission’s navigation team.
This fact, which has not been mentioned previously as far as I remember, suggests that there is a good chance that New Horizons might fly through its planned window and aim its cameras at the wrong spot in the sky, missing Pluto entirely. It also explains partly why the images released so far have been so fuzzy: They are focused mostly on doing navigation work, and are taking wide angle shots to make sure they catch Pluto in their picture frame. Zooming in too close might actually miss Pluto as they don’t exactly know where it is.
All this only makes the July 14th fly-by even more exciting. Let us hope they do due diligence and get the pictures we all want!
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Bob, I have been a little surprised by how fuzzy the images so far have been but your explanation must explain it. Do you have any idea what the aperture is of their main camera? A relatively small telescope can get a clearer image of Mars at similar distances and our telescopes have to contend with the earth’s atmosphere.
Apparently my fingernails weren’t bitten down quite enough yet.
Is there evidence of massive objects in the kuiper belt, or beyond, causing perturbations in Pluto’s orbit?
No. The reason they do not know Pluto’s exact position is simply because its 248 year orbit has only been tracked for less than 80 years. We simply don’t have enough information yet to precisely plot out the orbit. We can make some very good estimates, and every minute that New Horizons gets closer to Pluto those estimates improve, but they are still nonetheless estimates.
Note that we are not talking about gigantic errors. The problem is that to point New Horizons precisely, at the speed it will be traveling as it flies past Pluto, requires a level of precision that we simply might not yet have.
Perhaps now is the time to start taking progressively narrower field-of-view so that a more precise location can be determined and they can more accurately point the camera at closest approach?
Up to last week, all pluto imaging came from OpNav Campaigns that LORRI was used for. I would hope that the KinetX team that actually controlls the probe’s trajectory has a solid backroom of engineers, or can reach out to other outsourced teams that serve NASA. If that is wishful thinking on my part, maybe JPL could be pulled in to tap their vast knowledge (New Horizons is ran by APL not JPL) ?