The Pluto system was recently explored by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, making closest approach on 14 July 2015. Pluto's surface displays diverse landforms, terrain ages, albedos, colors, and composition gradients. Evidence is found for a water-ice crust, geologically young surface units, surface ice convection, wind streaks, volatile transport, and glacial flow. Pluto's atmosphere is highly extended, with trace hydrocarbons, a global haze layer, and a surface pressure near 10 microbars. Pluto's diverse surface geology and long-term activity raise fundamental questions about how small planets remain active many billions of years after formation. Pluto's large moon Charon displays tectonics and evidence for a heterogeneous crustal composition; its north pole displays puzzling dark terrain. Small satellites Hydra and Nix have higher albedos than expected.
The Kuiper Belt is a distant region of the outer Solar System. On 1 January 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close to (486958) 2014 MU69, a cold classical Kuiper Belt object approximately 30 kilometers in diameter. Such objects have never been substantially heated by the Sun and are therefore well preserved since their formation. We describe initial results from these encounter observations. MU69 is a bilobed contact binary with a flattened shape, discrete geological units, and noticeable albedo heterogeneity. However, there is little surface color or compositional heterogeneity. No evidence for satellites, rings or other dust structures, a gas coma, or solar wind interactions was detected. MU69’s origin appears consistent with pebble cloud collapse followed by a low-velocity merger of its two lobes.
GEOScan is a proposed space-based facility of globally networked instruments that will provide revolutionary, massively dense global geosciences observations. Major scientific research projects are typically conducted using two approaches: community facilities, and investigator lead focused missions. While science from space is almost exclusively conducted within the mission model, GEOScan is a new concept designed as a constellation facility from space utilizing a suite of space-based sensors that optimizes the scientific value across the greatest number of scientific disciplines in the earth and geosciences, while constraining cost and accommodation related parameters. Our grassroots design processes target questions that have not, and will not be answered until simultaneous global measurements are made. The relatively small size, mass, and power of the GEOScan instruments make them an ideal candidate for a hosted payload aboard a global constellation of communication satellites, such as the Iridium NEXT's 66satellite constellation. This paper will focus on the design and planning components of this new type of heterogeneous, multi-node facility concept, such as:costing, design for manufacture, science synergy, and operations of this non-traditional mission concept. We will demonstrate that this mission design concept has distinct advantages over traditional monolithic satellite missions for a number of scientific measurement priorities and data products due to the constellation configuration, scaled manufacturing and facility model.
GEOScan, proposed as a globally networked orbiting facility utilizing Iridium NEXT's 66-satellite constellation, will provide revolutionary, massively dense global geoscience observations and targets questions scientists have not been able to answer, and will not answer, until simultaneous global measurements are made. GEOScan dramatically lowers the logistical and cost barriers for transmitting "big data" from 66 satellites by using Iridium's communications platform and commercial-off-the-shelf components. Iridium's Hosted Payload Program facilitates the effort, but it could be executed using any small-sat constellation. Each GEOScan sensor suite consists of 6 instruments: a Radiometer to measure Earth's total outgoing radiation; a GPS Compact Total Electron Content Sensor to image Earth's plasma environment and gravity field; a MicroCam Multispectral Imager to provide the first uniform, instantaneous image of Earth and measure global cloud cover, vegetation, land use, and bright aurora; a Radiation Belt Mapping System (dosimeter) to measure energetic electron and proton distributions; a Compact Earth Observing Spectrometer to measure aerosol-atmospheric composition and vegetation; and MEMS Accelerometers to deduce non-conservative forces aiding gravity and neutral drag studies. These instruments, employed in a constellation, can provide major breakthroughs in Earth and geospace science, as well as offering low-cost space situational awareness, surveillance, and reconnaissance opportunities. As a means of risk reduction and technology maturation, GEOScan will also leverage a pathfinder JHU/APL effort to develop several enabling technologies and flight-qualify them using a pair of nanosatellites to be launched in mid-2013.
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