Related papers: Plutos interaction with its space environment: Sol…
The Ulysses spacecraft has been orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse since it encountered Jupiter in February 1992. Since then it made almost three revolutions about the Sun. Here we report on the final three years of data taken by…
We report on a variety of standard techniques used by New Horizons including a solar ultraviolet occultation, ultraviolet airglow observations, and high-phase look-back particulate search imaging to search for an atmosphere around Pluto's…
Considering effects of tidal plus centrifugal stress acting on icy-rocks and the tensile strength thereof, icy-rocks being in the density range (1-2.4) g cm-3 which had come into existence as collisional ejecta (debris) in the vicinity of…
The Ulysses spacecraft is orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse ($ i = 79^{\circ}$, perihelion distance 1.3 AU, aphelion distance 5.4 AU). Between January 1996 and December 1999 the spacecraft was beyond 3 AU from the Sun and…
The discovery of Pluto in 1930 presaged the discoveries of both the Kuiper Belt and ice dwarf planets, which are the third class of planets in our solar system. From the 1970s to the 19990s numerous fascinating attributes of the Pluto…
The mass density of dust particles that form from asteroids and comets in the interplanetary medium of the solar system is, near 1 AU, comparable to the mass density of the solar wind. It is mainly contained in particles of micrometer size…
Predicting the rate of escape and thermal structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere in preparation for the New Horizons Spacecraft encounter in 2015 is important for planning and interpreting the expected measurements. Having a moderate Jeans…
A search for temporal changes on Pluto and Charon was motivated by (1) the discovery of young surfaces in the Pluto system that imply ongoing or recent geologic activity, (2) the detection of active plumes on Triton during the Voyager 2…
The New Horizons spacecraft was launched on 19 January 2006. The spacecraft was designed to provide a platform for seven instruments that will collect and return data from Pluto in 2015. The design drew on heritage from previous missions…
The Ulysses spacecraft provided the first opportunity to identify and study Interstellar Dust (ISD) in-situ in the Solar System between 1992 and 2007. Here we present the first comprehensive analysis of the ISD component in the entire…
Pluto's surface is geologically complex because of volatile ices that are mobile on seasonal and longer time scales. Here we analyzed New Horizons LEISA spectral data to globally map the nitrogen ice, including nitrogen with methane diluted…
The New Horizons flyby of Pluto confirmed the existence of hazes in its atmosphere. Observations of a large high- to low- phase brightness ratio, combined with the blue color of the haze, suggest that the haze particles are fractal…
Pluto and its satellites will be the most distant objects ever reconnoitered when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft conducts its intensive flyby of this system in 2015. The size-frequency distribution (SFD) of craters on the surfaces in the…
A stellar occultation by Pluto was observed on 6 June 2020 with the 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes located at Devasthal, Nainital, India, using imaging systems in the I and H bands, respectively. From this event, we derive a surface pressure…
NASA's New Horizons (NH) Pluto-Kuiper belt (PKB) mission was launched on 19 January 2006 on a Jupiter Gravity Assist (JGA) trajectory toward the Pluto system for a 14 July 2015 closest approach; Jupiter closest approach occurred on 28…
The interaction of dust grains originating from the local interstellar cloud with the environment inside the heliosphere is investigated. As a consequence of this interaction the spatial distribution of interstellar dust grains changes with…
Context: Pluto possesses a thin atmosphere, primarily composed of nitrogen, in which the detection of methane has been reported. Aims: The goal is to constrain essential but so far unknown parameters of Pluto's atmosphere such as the…
A stellar occultation by Pluto on 5 September 2019 yielded positive detections at two separate stations. Using an approach consistent with comparable studies, we derived a surface pressure of $11.478 \pm 0.55~\mathrm{\mu bar}$ for Pluto's…
The space probe 'New Horizon' was launched on 19th of January 2006 in order to study Pluto and its moons. Spacecraft will fly by Pluto as close as 12500 km in the middle of July 2015 and will get the most detailed images of Pluto and its…
Following the detection of CO and HCN in Pluto's atmosphere, we report on new ALMA observations of Pluto with two main goals: (i) obtaining spatially-resolved measurements (~0.06'' on the ~0.15'' disk subtended by Pluto and its atmosphere)…