Someone asked on the forum when we’ll see the first colour photos of Pluto from New Horizons. The answer is that the first colour photo will be back on Earth at June 26th, 8:12 am. The next will be at July 6th, 6:49 am. The first close-up of Charon will be back here at July 13th, 12:25 pm. Closest approach will be on July 14, and almost all data gathering from the flyby will be complete in half a day. For a more complete schedule and planned photos see http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Path-to-Pluto/NH_Obs_Playbook_LORRI-MVIC.pdf
Worth looking at (image too big to post directly to this forum) is a simulation of what images we expect to see of Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra from the flyby, that have been returned to Earth before July 20. ““http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/charts-diagrams/20150310_voyager_simulations_nep_data.jpg:http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/charts-diagrams/20150310_voyager_simulations_nep_data.jpg
Only about 1% of all observations will be returned by July 20. After that there will be a big pause until the restart of data recovery on September 16.
Directly after the flyby, within a quarter of a day, there will be a number of occultations with the Sun, and the Earth, separately occulted by Pluto and Charon. That should give us some new data.
A cryptic summary of operations during flyby (half a day) is this, occultations are marked OCC, the highest resolution camera is LORRI.
