A Year on Pluto

Last week, NASA’s Dawn probe entered orbit above Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. But later this summer, the New Horizons spacecraft is set to race past Pluto, formerly a planet but now a dwarf planet. New Horizons launched in 2006 and will have taken nine years to reach Pluto. But how long is a year on Pluto? Thanks to the New Horizons team, we can see how one year on Pluto is 248 Earth years, or longer than the history of the independent United States.

A year on Pluto
A year on Pluto

Credit for the piece goes to the NASA/New Horizon team graphics department.

Masses and Payloads

While last week ended with an xkcd post, I want to start this week with an older one I missed about spacecraft. Because spacecraft are awesome every day of the week. In particular it looks at mass and payload capacity of spacecraft and rockets over time.

The space shuttle was big
The space shuttle was big

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Orion Test Flight

At the time of writing, Orion has yet to launch. But by the time this is published, Orion—NASA’s successor to the space shuttle—will hopefully be at or near the greatest distance from Earth achieved by a spacecraft since the Apollo programme. The Houston Chronicle illustrated the different stages of the unmanned test flight. Hopefully in several years when the programme has its manned flight this blog will still be here and somebody out there will similarly illustrate that mission.

Stage 4
Stage 4

Credit for the piece goes to Ken Ellis.

Habitable Exoplanets

What is out there beyond our solar system? Are there little green men in flying saucers? Or Klingons waging war? The first step in figuring that out is knowing how many planets can be inhabited by life as we know it. This interactive graphic from National Geographic explores just that. And as it turns out, most of the exoplanets we have discovered are not habitable. But a few offer promise. If only we could warp on over and properly explore them.

Exoplanet habitability
Exoplanet habitability

Credit for the piece goes to John Tomanio and Xaquín G.V.

Satellites

Naturally we have talked a lot about Rosetta and Philae the last few weeks. While Philae has exhausted its battery supply, Rosetta continues to orbit Comet 67P as that satellite’s own satellite. But what about Earth? What about our satellites? Thankfully the folks over at Quartz mapped that out for us in this great graphic. It portrays all the known functioning satellites in Earth’s orbit, their range, and launch weight.

Earth's satellites
Earth’s satellites

You can switch which variable colour encodes, e.g. country or age. And then by clicking on a satellite you can see its orbit height—this can also be animated. And for a neat little bit, the grey circle with the dotted line represents the International Space Station. The dot its launch weight, the dotted line its current weight. The one I have selected is the X-37B unmanned space plane operated by the US Air Force.

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky and Tim Fernholz.

Philae on 67P

In a few hours—not long after this blog post is published—we should know whether or not the washing-maching sized probe Philae has successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The operation is very complicated, this is a moving and spinning comet with a boulder-strewn surface dotted with ice spires. And as of a few hours the lander was having problems with the gas thrusters designed to slow the lander to a hover above the comet surface. Space is hard. So to explain what is happening and the scale of the things involved, we have an illustration from the Washington Post.

How big is the comet?
How big is the comet?

Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Patterson Clark, and Richard Johnson.

Super Moon

Monday witnessed Super Moon. It’s not a bird, nor a plane. It’s the Moon. But bigger. Thankfully the Guardian put together a nice graphic that explains what was going on and puts the Super Moon into context of regular, average guy Moon.

How the (regular) Moon was formed
How the (regular) Moon was formed

Credit for the piece goes to Paul Scruton.

Comet Siding Spring

Today we head off to the stars. Well, more appropriately the comets. The New York Times had a piece a little while back that looked at the orbits of several comets that pass near the Sun. Siding Spring in particular is highlighted because of its near approach later this autumn.

Comet paths near the sun
Comet paths near the sun

Credit for the piece goes to Jonathan Corum.

Jade Rabbit

In December, China landed a rover named Jade Rabbit on the Moon. The South China Morning Post created a nice infographic to explain the lunar landing and place it in the context of other missions to the Moon.

Cropping from the infographic
Cropping from the infographic

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.