The New Horizons space probe is set to pass Pluto next month, marking humanity’s closest encounter with the dwarf planet. As data is sent back to Earth, an Arizona laboratory is ready to recreate what is found.
Discovered in 1930 at Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory, Pluto is the second largest object in the Kuiper Belt, a band of ice and metallic debris at the edge of our solar system. As New Horizons is set to pass by in July after a nine-year journey, the observatory’s Josh Bangle said they are ready to celebrate.
“Just to kind of theme the year, we decided that we’re going to call it the Year of Pluto," said Bangle. "We’ve done some fun things around it to celebrate Pluto and its history to Flagstaff.”
Pluto was reclassified from planet status in 2006 due to improved observational technology. While it is a bit of a sensitive topic around town, Bangle said some people are hopeful the data sent back may show otherwise.
RELATED: NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Reveals Photos As It Draws Closer To Pluto
“I think there’s a lot of people who are like, ‘Hey, maybe it will become a planet again and maybe there will be hundreds of more planets we’ll discover after this,'” Bangle said.
Although Pluto and the many objects that make up the Kuiper belt have little chance of achieving planet status, there may be a lot to learn about the whole solar system from what is on it’s surface. We already have an idea of Pluto’s surface from decades of light data in the form of wavelengths, called spectral data, from observations by land based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope.
However, Will Grundy, a New Horizon’s co-investigator, explains why we need to get closer.
“The real difference that you get when you send a spacecraft somewhere is spatial resolution," said Grundy. "So instead of seeing the entire globe as one point, you can make out the different landscapes and distinguish what they are.”
MORE: Arizona Telescope Keeps Watch on Modified NASA Mission
The surface of Pluto reflects sunlight back onto spectrometers, devices that record spectral data. Different substances with different physical and chemical properties will alter the light's wavelengths, which are then absorbed and recorded into the spectrometers. These are matched with wavelengths of known substances like methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
“You need to know the properties to be able to understand how they act in the environment of a planet’s surface," Grundy said. "And understanding how they act gets you to the processes that are at work. The action of processes over time sculpts the land.”
The New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 on a 9.5-year, 5-billion-kilometer trek across the solar system to spend a few hours with Pluto and its five known moons. The probe will tear past the dwarf planet on July 14 and provide humankind with its first intimate look at the remote world in orbit around the sun. (Photo via sciencenews.org)
Ultimately, studying the surface of Kuiper Belt objects may give us better insight to the origins of material in our solar system, including what’s on Earth. Grundy said a lab at neighboring Northern Arizona University is already recreating ice samples based on pre-existing data and soon from New Horizons. This can give researchers a better idea of what is happening on the surface.
“What you really want to get at is the origins," Grundy said. "How did that get to be there in the first place? So, what we’re doing in the laboratory is a key piece of information that feeds into how we fully understand the processes in order to run the clock backwards to the starting point.”
Inside the lab is about a million dollars worth of equipment and only three other labs like it in the world. Stephen Tegler oversees NAU’s Ice Lab and explains the recreation process.
“So what we do is we take light, this is called a Fournier Transform Infrared Spectrometer,” said Tegler.
It’s complex. Before Tegler gets too far into the process, Tegler explains the constant noise.
“It’s a compressor, so it’s a liquid helium refrigerator," Tegler said. "It allows us to get very cold.”
And while Tegler and his student researchers subject themselves to hours at a time to the loud drone of the compressor, it is for a critical reason.
“We cool it down to the temperatures that are representative of what’s on the surface of Pluto," Tegler said. "Hundreds of degrees colder than room temperature. And these other things that are making a little bit of noise they’re different kinds of pumps basically simulating the vacuum of space. So we’re simulating the surface of Pluto.”
Tegler and his team add various gasses and liquid nitrogen to recreate the volatile ice and hit it with light to match the data sent from observatories and soon New Horizons.
“And by finding that match, that allows us to infer and get the most out of the data that comes back from the spacecraft mission," said Tegler. "What’s the temperature of the ice? What’s the phase of the ice? What’s the composition of the ice? And to get the most out of the spacecraft data, you really need a robust laboratory to investigate, to poke and prod the ice if you will.”
Once the lab is turned off, the ice melts instantly and the gases are released outside. But as more images and spectral data come in from New Horizons, that droning may become more constant as the surface of the once planet nearly three and half billion miles away becomes much clearer.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that a wavelength is proportional to frequency and cannot be independently altered.
Updated 6/22/2015 at 12:38 p.m.
