OT: Countdown to Pluto (7 days)
LeatherGryphon
Posts: 12,084
The New Horizons probe is only 7 days and 5 million miles from Pluto.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html
And for more fun than a barrel of monkeys... "Eyes on Pluto" (and the JPL visualization app "Eyes on the Solar System")
http://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/newhorizons/newhorizons.xml
After you take a peak at the interactive detailed pre-visualization of the camera maneuvers the New Horizons spacecraft will make as it approaches the Pluto system, step back and exit out of the Pluto tour to see what else JPL's "Eyes on the Solar System" app offers. Every major spacecraft, every major planet and moon are available for an interactive "ride-along", or telescopic view, or free fly interactive experience. View them "Now" or speed up or slow down the passage of time, zoom in, zoom out, fly around the craft or planet. See the name of something in the background? Click on it, and click again to go there. Great fun for nerds. Lots of buttons to push. It's like an educational adventure game. :coolsmile:
Any planetary or space renders out there waiting for an opportunity to be displayed? :coolsmile:
As of this morning (Monday July 6, 2015) Computer glitch seems to have been fixed and the probe will be ready for the fly-by.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasas-new-horizons-team-reviving-pluto-probe-after-anomaly-n386876
Here are links to the previous threads on this topic.
3-weeks: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/57997/
2-weeks: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/849937/
Latest images show Pluto in unprecedented detail. It's red with black stripes or spots!
In the image below I suspect that the white triangle on the immense red plateau on the center image is a Plutonian Pyramid. Part of an interstellar space port on Pluto! %-P
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Comments
Interesting so this is about the identity confused body in space? Cool. Too bad it is so hard to leave the solar system.
Yeah...takes at least 2 gravity assist maneuvers and about 30 years of waiting to even barely leave what we would consider our solar system. Don't expect to ever reach the bounds of another stars influence while the batteries are still operating. *sad face*
Savour this moment. No further missions to Pluto are under the slightest consideration and, considering the huge time it takes from proposal to arrival of the probe, none of us will be alive to see the next one (assuming that there will be a next one).
With a bit of luck, the BBC Horizon series will do a program on the flyby. Stuff Wimbledon, that's what I want my licence fee money spent on.
Cheers,
Alex.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons , New Horizons appears to have got from proposal to Pluto in 14 years (the proposal was accepted in 2001). That's a moderately long time, but I would hope to squeeze a few more such periods into my lifetime, and there are a lot of folk on here a good deal younger than I am.
Yeah...takes at least 2 gravity assist maneuvers and about 30 years of waiting to even barely leave what we would consider our solar system. Don't expect to ever reach the bounds of another stars influence while the batteries are still operating. *sad face*
It is possible to reach Alpha Centauri in 40 years with current technology, if nuclear pulse propulsion (Project Orion) was used. Safer derivatives such as the Mini-Mag Orion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Mag_Orion) could do the same if the political will was there to develop it.
I do hope there is at least one more mission to Pluto, or missions to Neptune or Uranus in the near future though. The ice giants are relatively unexplored.
Tech readiness level 2 at best. See again in 50 years.
Mount Spock?
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/mount-spock-new-horizons-pluto-name-list-includes-star-trek-n388091
Interesting, but I thought everyone knew the name of that particular dragon isn't "falkor", it's "FALCOOOOOORRRR!!!"
Well, it's the end of day 6 and I've still been unable to change the title of this thread as I'd intended to. Boogers!
mumble, grumble, changing forums, grumble mumble.
Does the gear on the title line let you edit it?
My favorite peak is Pike's. Loved the train ride up. Donuts at the top!
It pretends to. But when I press "SAVE" it replies "ValidateFormat" and stays on the same page.
Only 5 more days to go. Spacecraft appears to be working OK. Yea!
There will be some pictures soon after it passes Pluto, but the best pictures and data will take months to get downloaded to Earth.
Early surface map of Pluto, suitable for wrapping around a sphere
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-map-of-pluto-the-whale-and-the-donut
Only 4 more days to go.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/find-heart-whale-new-horizons-picture-pluto-n388816
so like how long does it take for signals to pass between nasa and the vger?
how many watts does it take to transmit?
does it use solar powered batteries?
its nuclear powered.
It still is able to send useful information back we would otherwise not have. A hugely successful mission.
Takes 18+ hours last time I checked for a signal to come back.
Wikipedia tells us this about power
Latest Photo 7/9/15 5:00 PM EST
is tha a photo photo? NICE!
thats crazy impressive!
Yep, but it's a composite of two instruments on the probe. The detail is black & white from a reflectance measuring instrument and the color was added from previous photos using the visible light camera.
470 watts
starting to catch the excitement
Wouldn't be a good microwave for a variety of reasons *chuckles*
that counts! Can't wait for the new stuff we will get in the coming months. Well I can wait. But the images we get the day of the flyby will still be awesome and i can't wait for those :)
Um..., are we talking cross-purposes here? "VGR1" is one of the two "Voyager" craft launched in the mid 1970s. It's in deep space out of the solar system. beyond the heliopause and deep in the Kuiper Belt. The two Voyager craft together examined Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune but not Pluto
Pluto is currently being approached by the "New Horizons" probe launched 9 years ago and was designed to last 15 years. It will do a quick fly-by on Monday. It will not orbit Pluto. It does have other observational tasks after the fly-by that the geeks will love but nothing as dramatic as the fly-by for the general public. It can be redirected slightly if anything interesting comes up, and reachable, in the next 5 or 6 years.
could be my mistake, I interpreted vger to mean voyager 1, cause its on my mind constantly. Maybe they did not mean that. and just meant generically.
We're so used to modern space probe going to a planet or moon or asteroid or comet and orbiting it and even landing on it, but we forget what it was like in the early days when a fly-by was all we expected. Ooh, look! Here it comes! Ooh, look! There it is! Ooh, look! There it goes!
Heh, at the speed New Horizons is travelling, it'll be "Ooh, look! Here it... where'd it go... Ah! Went..."
think it's too late to get a stamp updated with pluto and new horizons on it? or would they not do a stamp of a "dwarf" planet *chuckles*
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/07/07/why-the-u-s-postal-service-is-excited-about-nasas-mission-to-pluto/
Article says at the end that new stamp was petitioned in 2012 but has not yet been designed. Perhaps they're waiting for the dart to hit the fence before drawing the target around it. After all, the stamp should look like the real deal if the mission is a success! (Although, the painting below, done in 1991, was a pretty good guess!)
i don't think I was aware of that last paragraph. Maybe it will happen :) The rest is exactly what I was joking about.
now maybe other people might get the reference if they weren't aware.
At least it's better then the 'Ranger probes', Oh look rocks, bigger rocks, is that moon dust, (Los of signal).