New Horizons wake up - On Pluto's Doorstep [View all]

[Baclava]

On Saturday, Dec. 6, New Horizons will awaken from its final segment of hibernation on its historic, 3-billion-plus mile cruise from Earth to Pluto.

“The final hibernation wake up Dec. 6 signifies the end of an historic cruise across the entirety of our planetary system” - New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “We are almost on Pluto’s doorstep!”

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is the principal investigator and leads the mission; SwRI leads the science team, payload operations, and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.


http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Help the New Horizons team pick a wake-up image



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http://www.alexharrisonparker.com/plutopoll/#Poll




New Horizons images shows Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, and were taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The image of Jupiter is an infrared color composite taken by the spacecraft's near-infrared imaging spectrometer, the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array. The infrared wavelengths used highlight variations in the altitude of the Jovian cloud tops, with blue denoting high-altitude clouds and hazes, and red indicating deeper clouds. The prominent bluish-white oval is the Great Red Spot.