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Hi, this is Leila Mays. I'm a research scientist at Goddard.

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You are viewing a solar wind simulation called ENLIL from Dr. Dusan Odstricil.

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You can think of this as weather map for the solar system.

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This simulation provides solar wind predictions at Pluto for the New Horizons fly by.

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New Horizons' trajectory is the white line starting from near the Earth

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when it launched in 2006, and it has taken 9.5 years to reach pluto in 2015.

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The sun is at the center, and we are viewing the plane of the planets

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from above as we are zooming out of the inner solar system.

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The planets are labeled as circles and spacecraft by squares.

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The color is showing the density of particles in the solar wind, which are always streaming out of the sun.

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And near the Earth, the solar wind speed is around 1 million miles per hour.

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You can see that the solar wind structures maintain their shape at large distances.

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The black outlines you see are Coronal Mass Ejections from the sun,

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which expand and elongate as they flow out. You can see them being

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captured by the solar wind structures and merge to form

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Global Merged Interaction Regions which the New Horizons spacecraft can observe as enhancements.

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Coronal mass ejections can take about 5 months to reach Pluto

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so this simulation begins 6 months ago and includes information

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about over 100 coronal mass ejections. Now we start to

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in on Pluto before the time of the New Horizons fly by

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closest approach in mid-July.

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