Pluto’s Finest Revealed!

#AskNASA

With the blue Atlantic Ocean as backdrop, smoke and steam fill the launch pad, at right, as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft roars into the sky aboard an Atlas V rocket| PHOTO:NASA

Launch Information

Spacecraft: New Horizons
Launch Vehicle: Lockheed Martin Atlas V
Launch Location: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Launch Pad: Space Launch Complex 41
Launched: January 19, 2006
Launch Time: 2:00.00 p.m. EST

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have now released new images of the Pluto. In a release that was colorfully launched yesterday dabbed ‘New Horizons’, NASA unveiled a new image that shows a clear view of Pluto’s surface, covered with wide smooth areas, lumpy terrain and mountains-the finest images seen so far.

The Mission

How Pluto has come into focus over time.

The image which was released a day after the spacecraft made its closest pass over Pluto, cruising about 7,700 miles over the surface now suggest that there is more that we probably did not know about the planet that has been brought to light. For instance, scientists have always told us that Pluto’s surface is covered with nitrogen ice, methane ice and carbon monoxide ice but this latest revelation brings to the fore the existence of H₂0 on the surfaces of the mountains found in Pluto.

According to John Spencer, a planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, it will take about 16 months to download all of the information gathered in order to fully analyze the ice mountains on planet Pluto.

Charon

NASA has also released a full globe view of Pluto’s largest moon named Charon which was prior to this latest revelations thought to be an ancient terrain covered in craters. Besides Charon, Pluto has four other small moons namely; Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

‘The Dwarf Planet’

The spacecraft was which was used to file this findings was launched on January 19, 2006, before the big debate started over Pluto’s status as a planet,a debate that led to Pluto being reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union the same year.Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh.

Jeremiah Wakaya

Senior Editor

Real Trends Blog

 

SONU Polls Set to be Conducted Online

Erick Jangama,Secretary General-SONU

#UoNGangs

University of Nairobi students may soon be voting online through the student portal if new proposals aimed at stopping hooligans and goons running amok the university are anything to go by.

The proposal which was put forward yesterday in a meeting at the University of Nairobi Central Catering Unit(CCU) intends to propose measures to bring to a halt incidents where students have been reported to be terrorized by a cartel of hooligans said to be on the rampage in the university.

However, a section of students lead by SONU chairman Babu Owino walked out of the meeting in protest faulting the administration for pushing proposals down the throats in a meeting that was expected to take into account the views the students.The students particularly expressed concerns with a proposal to have them vote online in future elections saying that such a move was meant to facilitate rigging elections.

On his part, the Secretary General of SONU Erick Jangama said that there was a need for consultation with the students fraternity in order to come up with a work plan of weeding out  hooligans in the institution.Jangama further said that there is need to correct the impression that the university is experiencing some sort of crisis saying that that was farfetched and a misplaced idea by those who want to tarnish the good name of the University of Nairobi.

Among other recommendations made by the university’s administration to help boast security in halls of residents and deal with hooliganism include reverting the management of mini-shops otherwise known as tuck shops to the university administration.

The meeting came on the heels of a Citizen Television report on UoN gangs that allegedly  murdered two students in cold blood under mysterious circumstances.

By Jared Too

Featured Writer