Word: charon
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...That's what New Horizons will be investigating when it reaches Pluto, its major moon Charon, and two smaller moons, found just last fall. And while a more than nine-year journey sounds like a long one, it's remarkably quick for a probe that has to travel more than 3 billion miles. Indeed, at a top speed of more than 47,000 m.p.h., which it will achieve by playing off Jupiter's gravity in a 2007 flyby, New Horizons will be the fastest spacecraft in history (it's no slouch even now: a mere nine hours after launch...
...EARTH LAUNCH - Between Jan. 17 and Feb. 14 ? SATURN ? JUPITER Jupiter gravity assist - February to March 2007 ? URANUS ? NEPTUNE ? PLUTO PLUTO-CHARON ENCOUNTER July 2015. During flyby, the probe will pass within a mere 6,000 miles (10,000 km) of Pluto?40 times as close as the Earth is to our own moon ? KUIPER BELT Voyage into Kuiper Belt 2016-2020 What is the Kuiper Belt? Named for Gerard Kuiper, who predicted its existence in the 1950s, it is a vast, disk-shaped cloud of thousands of icy bodies that starts near Neptune...
ORBIT OF PLUTO ? From Pluto, the sun appears about 1,000 times as dim as it does from Earth ? Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are locked in synchronous orbit, always keeping the same face toward each other...
...resolution telescope and camera capable of detecting features about the size of a football field ? REX - Uses radio waves to analyze the atmosphere and determine night-side temperature ? ALICE - Analyzes ultraviolet light to determine atmospheric composition ? RALPH - Makes color maps of the surfaces of Pluto and Charon and uses infrared measurements to determine surface composition ? SDC - Built by students in Colorado, this instrument will count and measure dust particles in space throughout the journey...
MYSTERIES OF AN ICY WORLD ? Pluto ? Charon ? If humans lived by Pluto time, they would never see a second birthday. The planet orbits the sun once every 248 Earth years ? And if humans lived on Pluto, they wouldn't have to diet. Pluto's gravity is so weak that a man weighing 300 lbs. (136 kg) on Earth would weigh just 20 lbs. (9 kg) on Pluto ? Unfortunately, breathing would be impossible. In addition to being intolerably cold, Pluto has a thin?and temporary?atmosphere of nitrogen molecules, with traces of carbon monoxide and methane...