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  • Paying a Visit to Pluto - Presented by Science at NASA.

  • At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever

  • launched, NASA's New Horizons, is hurtling through the void

  • at nearly one million miles per day.

  • Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some

  • missions last, and still has four more years of travel to go.

  • New Horizons is headed for the lonely world of Pluto on the

  • outer edge of the solar system.

  • Although astronomers now call Pluto a dwarf planet, "it's

  • actually a large place, about 5,000 miles around at the

  • equator," says Alan Stern, principal investigator for the mission.

  • "And it's never been explored."

  • Indeed, no spacecraft has ever visited Pluto or any dwarf

  • planet in the outer solar system.

  • "This is a whole new class of worlds," says Stern.

  • "To understand the solar system, we need to understand

  • worlds like Pluto."

  • Pluto is a resident of the Kuiper Belt, a vast region

  • beyond the orbit of Neptune.

  • Stern believes "the Kuiper Belt contains a thousand dwarf

  • planets or more - a whole zoo of them!

  • Dwarf planets are, in fact, the most numerous class of

  • planets in the solar system, and probably in the whole universe."

  • Pluto is a world of mysteries.

  • For one thing, Stern wonders, what are the molasses-colored

  • patches on Pluto's surface seen by the Hubble Space Telescope?

  • Some scientists think they could be deposits of primordial

  • organic matter.

  • "New Horizon's spectrometers will help us identify the

  • kinds of organic molecules on Pluto.

  • We expect to find something pretty interesting."

  • Hubble recently contributed more intrigue by spotting a new

  • moon circling Pluto - bringing the total to four.

  • Composite Hubble images of Pluto now resemble a miniature

  • planetary system.

  • New Horizons will hunt for even more moons as it approaches

  • the dwarf planet.

  • To aid in its investigations, New Horizons is carrying one

  • of the largest and highest resolution interplanetary

  • telescopes ever flown.

  • It's called LORRI, short for Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager.

  • "At closest approach to Pluto, LORRI can resolve details

  • almost as well as a spy camera.

  • The view will be incredible.

  • If we flew this instrument over Earth at the same altitude

  • as we plan to fly over Pluto, we would see individual

  • buildings and their shapes."

  • What will we see on Pluto?

  • Some researchers predict icy geysers.

  • Some say we could see those surface deposits of organic material.

  • Stern says simply, "There could be all kinds of surprises!

  • It's a first exploration of a new kind of planet."

  • New Horizons is scheduled to reach Pluto in 2015.

  • For mission updates, please visit science.nasa.gov.

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サイエンスキャスト冥王星訪問 (ScienceCasts: Visit To Pluto)

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    Bing-Je に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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