So, a date with Pluto, which filled the word “fleeting” with a new meaning, took place. The dwarf planet, the rapid approximation of which we enthusiastically observed over the past months, is now also rapidly moving away. However, as in many other experiments, real science begins only now that the technique has fulfilled its purpose.

In order to fully realize and comprehend the results of rapprochement with Pluto, you will need a rather significant time: the transfer of data received on July 14, 2015 and in the following days will end only by the end of 2016. The “New Horizons” probes due to significant remoteness from the Earth transfers information with a turtle speed - not more than 2 kbit/s - and 50 Gbit has accumulated data on it. Nevertheless, 2-3% of this volume is already on Earth, which allows if you do not draw any conclusions, then at least get closer to the understanding of what they will be for conclusions.

About the apparatus and expedition

The new horizons probe hit the road on January 20, 2006. Since there are no marching engines on it, he had to report almost all the necessary speed (more than 16 km/s) when starting. The gravitational maneuver of Jupiter added another 4 km/s to the speed of “new horizons”. The probe has its own engines and a small fuel supply, however, they are used only to change the orientation of the probe in space and minor trajectory corrections. Changes in spatial orientation are needed, in particular, to turn the device with the right tool to the object of research. Seven tools are installed on the “new horizons”, and not all of them are designed to receive photos.

The main heroine of the past days was the “black and white” camera of the visible Lorri range, in fact, a 20-centimeter telescope with a megapixel Possel matrix, a field of view 0.29 ° and an angular resolution of a second of arc for a pixel. To obtain “color” images, a 7.5-centimeter telescope RALPH is intended, more precisely, the MVIC camera with a field of view of 5.7 ° and an angular resolution of about 4 seconds of an arc on a pixel, covering a visible range and a small area of ​​the infrared (IR) range. The RALPH device also includes a panoramic IR spectrometer Leisa, sensitive to the absorption stripes of ice (molecular nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, water, etc.).

The RALPH device is named after the bus driver, the hero of the American comedy series “The HoneyMooners” (“newlyweds”). The name of his sharp in the tongue of the wife was assigned to the panoramic spectrometer of the ultraviolet (UV) range of Alice, the task of which includes the study of the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Pluto. Two tools - SWAP and Pepssi - are used to study plasma in the immediate vicinity of the device. It is easy to guess what the SDC dust detector, developed and collected by students of the Colorado University in Boulder (USA), is used. Finally, the Rex tool is designed to observe the atmosphere of Pluto and the possibly existing atmosphere of Haron in the radiodiapason.

Dramatic pause

The implementation of the main program of the expedition began in January 2015 and will end in January 2016, and the actual conveying program with Pluto was carried out from July 13 to 15, 2015. At this time, the device followed the radio monitoring; The work program was loaded on it in advance and was fully performed automatically. However, it is clear that the possibilities to quickly control the device, for the exchange of information with which it takes 9 hours, is simply not.

The radio and the “new horizons” meant that it was possible to find out about the successful completion of the span only some time later. At the same time, in early July, some reason appeared to be nervous: 10 days before rapprochement, the device suddenly moved to a “safe” regime. However, the reason turned out to be trivial - the on -board computer was somewhat overloaded with the tasks - and the failure managed to quickly eliminate. The further, apparently, passed according to plan, and now the device regularly transfers the results obtained during the span.

The data that are presented to the public court today are the overwhelming majority of pictures, and this is understandable: no matter how powerful scientific load they carry graphs, not a single interplanetary mission will attract significant attention if the image of the unknown world will return to the ground. And the photos did not deceive the expectations. Each of them contains something non -trivial.

"Heart" and "grooves"

Even in the pictures obtained on the flying section of the trajectory, a bright area in the form of a heart was noticed on Pluto, which the project team proposes to name the Tombo region in honor of the opener of Pluto. In the first portion of the pictures there are several high -resolution frames showing the relief of the Tombo region and its environs. In one of the pictures, a mountainous area is visible, covered with sharp -hearted peaks up to 3.5 km high.

From ground and near-earth observations, it was already known that the surface of Pluto is covered with frozen molecular nitrogen with an admixture of methane and carbon monoxide, but neither nitrogen, nor methane, nor co-core are sufficient strength to form similar pyramidal structures. The presence of mountains means that methane and nitrogen are a thin layer on a more durable basis - water ice. The team of "new horizons" suggests name these mountains with the name of Nepalz Tenzing Norgei, one of the two conquerors of Everest.

In the neighborhood with the mountains of Norgei, there is an area with a completely different relief-an almost smooth ice plain, divided into separate cells with a diane of about 20-30 km. The project participants offer this area to be called a satellite plain in honor of the first artificial celestial object. The cells on the satellite plain are separated by “grooves”, some “grooves” are filled with a dark substance. The origin of the cells can be associated with convection in the thickness of the ice or with cracking the surface in the process of compression. To the north-west of the cells there is an even more smooth surface with several dark spots, from which dark “tails” of several hundred meters long stretch for each other, as if dust blew off the wind from these spots.

The unusual image of the images is not only that they are present on them, but also in what is not on them, but there are no shock craters on them, at least large -sizes of more than a few hundred meters. The absence of traces of falling meteorites on such a significant area (the detailed area has a size of several hundred kilometers) turned out to be one of the main surprises of the project.

The surface, devoid of craters, is also found on other bodies of the solar system, which is usually associated with geological activity, which constantly “rejuvenates” the surface of the body, erasing the old scars (as on Earth). Activity implies the presence of an internal energy source. On other small ice balls, for example, on the satellite of Jupiter Europe, on the satellite of Saturn Enzelada or on the satellite of Neptune Titon, the source may be a tide of the close planet-giant (not everything is so simple in this regard). But in the Pluto -Haron system there are no tidal deformations, but there is apparently activity.

What is the reason for this activity (and recent activity: the absence of craters means that the age of the surface does not exceed hundreds of millions)? There is no answer to this question yet. A possible explanation: under the hard surface of Pluto, the still liquid ocean is hidden, and the surface is heated by heat released during its gradual freezing. Interestingly, the activity of the surface of Pluto in the absence of tidal deformations may mean that the role of the tides is also overestimated on other ice satellites.

True, it must be borne in mind that so far only images are not transmitted to Earth with the highest resolution, moreover, compressed, so part of the surface parts, including craters, could be lost. On more general plans obtained from a large distance, it is clear that there are shock craters in other regions of Pluto, so youth is a property of only some parts of the surface.

The composition of Pluto

There are no detailed data on the chemical composition of the surface of Pluto, except that, according to the Leisa spectrometer, the frozen methane is distributed quite unevenly on the surface of Pluto, and the noticeable content of the ice of carbon monoxide is observed in even one place - in the left half of the Tombo region. In the future, when analyzing spectra with higher spatial and spectral resolution, one can hope to identify not only methane on the pluton, but also, for example, other alkanes (ethane, propane), as well as more complex organic matter, in particular, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

An indication of the fact that in surface chemical reactions on the pluton can be synthesized, an organic is a pinkish tint of its surface, typical of many objects on the periphery of the solar system, both in the Kuiper belt and it, presumably belonging to the so -called Tolina - a complex mixture of various organic substances. The dark substance on Pluto is found not only in the form of veins and spots, but also in the form of extensive “black” areas, which, fortunately, are not only visible in the general pictures of Pluto, but also came to frames with maximum resolution. On these frames it is clear that the “black” areas are densely strewn with craters, that is, it is significantly more old than “bright” areas, similar areas of Tombo.

When the “New Horizons” probes was already moving away from Pluto, with the help of the alice spectrometer there was an eclipse of the sun by a pluto, due to which data on the length and the chemical composition of its atmosphere were obtained. Signs of the atmosphere were fixed at a distance of 1.5 thousand km from the surface of the dwarf planet, which is much further than it was possible to observe from the ground. Above the other molecules, nitrogen molecules are taken in the atmosphere of Pluto, methane is added below them, and finally, signs of heavier hydrocarbons appear at the very surface of the planet in the atmospheric absorption spectrum.

Due to the small mass, Pluto actively loses its gas shell. At the height, it is picked up and ionizes the solar wind, and now the probe flies through the ion tail stretching behind Pluto. The speed of loss of the gas membrane is approximately 500 tons per hour. This means that during its existence, Pluto lost the amount of nitrogen, an equivalent ice shell with a thickness of several hundred meters to more than two kilometers. Since the presence of mountains indicates in favor of a very small thickness of the layer of frozen molecular nitrogen, it cannot be excluded that atmospheric nitrogen is partially not a product of the sublemation of surface ice N2, but is released from some underground tanks. By the way, the remnants of the emissions may also be the dusty “tails” mentioned above.

Haron and other satellites

Pluto's satellite Haron in the photographs received also looks very smooth and not particularly painted. At the north pole of Haron is a rather clearly defined dark area (which received an unofficial name Mordor) with a more extended and blurry reddish halo. The thickness of a layer of a dark substance covering a mordor is small. There are several spots in this area - perhaps shock craters, where the dark layer is filled with a light substance, thrown out from a small depth. To the south of Mordor, the satellite is surrounded by a system of faults and ridges, stretching for a thousand kilometers. Another canyon is a few kilometers deep on Haron’s limb.

The absence of numerous craters on Haron is even more difficult to explain than smooth areas on the surface of Pluto. True, it must be taken into account that the images of Haron obtained from the apparatus to date have a significantly worse resolution than images of Pluto surface. In general, experts agree that the forms of the relief of Pluto and Haron were significantly more diverse than one could expect. The surfaces of these bodies are not just active - a combination of chemistry and thermodynamics on them leads to a very wide palette of processes, and the need to understand their intricacies will provide planetologists with work for a long time.

The data of the "new horizons" also made it possible to clarify the size of Pluto and Haron. Their diameters are 2370 km and 1208 km, respectively. The specified value of the diameter of Pluto is somewhat exceeds the estimate of the diameter of Erida - the main opponent of Pluto among transneptunal objects. This, of course, led to the resumption of conversations that Pluto was in vain excluded from among the planets, since he was still the largest in his area of ​​space. However, for a more full comparison, it would be necessary to evaluate the diameter of Erid in a similar way. Let's fly to her - see.

In addition to Pluto and Haron, during the span, pictures of four other satellites of Pluto - Stiks, Nickwoman, Kerber and Hydra were obtained. So far, detailed images are presented for nicknames and hydra. The images of the hydra for the first time made it possible to accurately determine the size of this satellite - 30 by 45 km (ground estimates ranged from several tens to one and a half hundred kilometers). The surface of the hydra as a whole is very bright (albeit with significant variations of brightness), it reflects about 45% of the sunlight that falls on it, occupying in this parameter an intermediate position between Pluto and Haron. This means that the hydra is covered with water ice. Nickta has similar sizes and properties of the surface. In general, all the satellites of Pluto (including Haron) have a more gray color than the dwarf planet itself, but reddish spots are released on the surfaces of Haron and Nicktares.

This is mainly all the information that was received from the apparatus by the end of July 2015. In mid -September, the transfer of the preliminary version of the full set of data obtained during the flight will begin. The prelimination is that initially an algorithm for compression with losses will be used for data packaging. Then, after about three months, the transfer of the same data will begin, but packed using compression without loss.

The final set will have black and white images of Pluto with a resolution of less than 100 m per pixel (for some surface areas), black and white images of Haron with a resolution of about 150 m per pixel (for some areas of the surface), color images of both bodies with a resolution of about 0.64 km for pixel for Pluto and 1.4 km per pixel for karon, as well as Black and white and color images of the small satellites of Pluto-nicknames, hydra, sticks and Kerber-with a resolution of half a kilometer to several kilometers per pixel. For comparison: the best pictures of Pluto received from the ground, more precisely, from a near -Earth orbit, have a resolution of about a hundred kilometers per pixel.

Further, the device may be given the opportunity to explore another of the objects of the Kuiper belt. There are two candidates, but soon (in the coming weeks) one of them will be selected in order to carry out the necessary correction of the orbit in time. The final decision on the extension of the expedition will be made in 2016–2017, and the meeting with a new object for research will take place a year later.

Photo NASA from the site
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/