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On July 14th this year NASA’s space probe successfully completed a flyby past Pluto after a decade of time. What initially was an expensive endeavor was paid off by high resolution images of the planet that has never been seen before. One popular image captures the planet’s red-brownish surface from afar. This is interesting because Pluto was once thought to be a dull gray or blue due to the icy face.
Still more data is to come, however the unimaginable distance (7.5 billion kilometers) between our planet and the New Horizon space probe only complicates the matter. It is a proven and tested fact that the universe has a speed limit also known as the speed of light. Data sent from the space probe traveling at the speed of light arrives on earth 4 hours late.
Looking back in 2007 a year after launch at Cape Canaveral Florida, New Horizon took a turn around Jupiter. This passing favored in providing high-res photos of Jupiter, little red spot and Jupiter’s moon Io with a view of its volcanic eruptions. Most importantly the fly by past Jupiter gave New Horizon a speed boost letting the spacecraft meet Pluto as scheduled. According to theplanetstoday.com the gravity assist allows the spacecraft to save 3 years of travel. This is due to gravitational pull by a huge body of mass. The large body pulls the spacecraft closer towards itself while the aim of the spacecraft is to approach the planet however miss it resulting in the craft to propel forward.
Gravity assist is common if not an essential part to spaceflight farther than our moon. An example is voyager 1 and 2 using the hothman transfer. A rocket traveling to the outer planets decreases in speed as it gets pulled by the sun. Thus it takes a bigger quantity of fuel to get to the destination. However fuel is mass and it will burn more fuel to carry the fuel leading to inefficiency. There is also the complication of time which was something available decades back. The launching in 2006 was the only chance we’ll get to see Pluto as at that point the planet was the closest it would be to the Sun.
Since Pluto is the farthest ‘dwarf’ planet from the sun it takes more time for it to revolve around the sun. Unlike Mercury, a close planet, for example due to the sun’s strong gravity a year on its surface 88 earth days. For Pluto it takes 248 earth years to complete one revolution. If NASA had somewhat failed to send New Horizon we wouldn’t see Pluto up close in our lifetime, which according to nytimes.com, almost happened. After the flyby past Pluto New Horizon’s current mission is to research the Kuiper Belt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/7/8907583/pluto-color-red-brown
http://www.universetoday.com/44191/how-long-does-it-take-pluto-to-orbit-the-sun/