Get Some
General => General Chat => Intellectual Discussion => Topic started by: Apostrophe Spacemonkey on July 23, 2014, 01:02:02 pm
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For the last 80 years, Pluto has be a tiny blurry dot in the arse end of the solar system.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0b/Pluto-map-hs-2010-06-a-faces.jpg/1280px-Pluto-map-hs-2010-06-a-faces.jpg)
A year from now, we will get out first ever decent view of the dwarf planet when New Horizons arrives. The space craft will pass within 10,000 km of Pluto, taking many Hi-res pictures.
(http://iforce.co.nz/i/z1krzhkh.hvb.jpg)
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That reminds me. Next Year James Doohan, aka Scotty from Star Trek, will be landing on Pluto.
http://www.planetxpo.com/doohan/ (http://www.planetxpo.com/doohan/)
The James Doohan Farewell
James Doohan gets his name sent to Pluto
January 19, 2006
We've just got word from Chris Doohan that James Doohan's name was sent on DVD (along with many others), on the New Horizons launch today.
This rocket is the fastest rocket in history. It will reach the moons orbit in only 9 hours, then slingshot itself towards Jupiter. It won't reach Pluto for nine years. After probing Pluto and it's moons, it will fly into through Kuiper belt and eventually out of the Solar System.
God's speed, Jimmy.
http://www.universetoday.com/109026/a-history-of-curious-artifacts-sent-into-space (http://www.universetoday.com/109026/a-history-of-curious-artifacts-sent-into-space)
New Horizons Memorabilia
Launched on January 19th, 2006, New Horizons is headed towards a historic encounter with Pluto and its moons next year. From there, New Horizons will survey any Kuiper Belt objects of opportunity along its path and then head out of the solar system, becoming the fifth spacecraft to do so. In addition to a suite of scientific instruments, New Horizons also carries the ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, a Florida & Maryland state quarter, a piece of Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne, and an American flag. These will doubtless confuse any extraterrestrial salvagers!
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([url]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/New_Horizons_2.jpg[/url])
Are you sure that's real? Looks photoshopped.
Probably part of a conspiracy to make Spacemonkey think that his last foray into the great universe, where he risked life and limb while eating an excessive quantity of bananas in a space capsule, was not in vain.
Anyway, real or not, I can at the very least conclude that NASA will not be legally permitted to use a disclaimer claiming the absence of harm to animals. Reports indicate that it is mentally traumatizing for monkeys to be unable to fling faeces due to the absence of gravity. Those poor creatures, the confusion must be horrible.
I myself am confused. But only in a sexual context and only when I see Spacemonkey.
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New Horizons has come out of hibernation and is now active
http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html (http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html)
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New Horizons has come out of hibernation and is now active
[url]http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html[/url] ([url]http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html[/url])
Damn you SpaceMonkey, this is one of the most interesting things I've seen in ages
I will be stuck looking at this all night
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NAME
Voyager 1
RANGE
19.53 billion km
ROUND-TRIP LIGHT TIME
1.51 days
ANTENNA
NAME
DSS 63
AZIMUTH
87.00 deg
ELEVATION
15.27 deg
WIND SPEED
8.65 km/hr
MODE
-
DOWN SIGNAL
SOURCE
VOYAGER 1
TYPE
DATA
DATA RATE
159.00 b/sec
FREQUENCY
8.42 GHz
POWER RECEIVED
8.54 x 10-23 kW
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NAME
Voyager 1
Not just Voyager 1.
They are currently tracking:
VGR1
ACE
SOHO
MSGR
THB
NHPC
M01O
MRO
MVN
MEX
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More info for those interested.
I'm especially looking forward to some super awesome pictures. It's amazing really how far it has travelled since it was launch back in 2006.
New Horizons will begin its Pluto science campaign in January, and will make its closest approach to Pluto in July. It will explore the outer-most and most-populated region of the solar system, the Kuiper belt, which is full of rocky, icy objects that have remained largely unchanged since the formation of the solar system.
"This is the place that this spacecraft was built to operate, and these are the operations that this team has waited a decade to actually go and execute," Stern said. "So it's game time."
NASA launched the New Horizons mission in 2006 on a $700 million mission to be the first spacecraft ever to see Pluto and its five moons up close. The piano-size spacecraft is powered by a nuclear power source and has travelled nearly 3 billion miles (4.8 billion km) to reach Pluto in a mere nine years, making it the fastest space probe ever launched). It has spent two-thirds of its journey in a hibernation state that has both prolonged the life of the instruments and reduced staff costs on the ground.
While New Horizons has gone through 18 hibernation periods, sleeping for about 1,873 days in all, this is the last one before it begins taking data on the Pluto system.
For 20 weeks of its flyby of Pluto, New Horizons will provide better photos of Pluto and its moons than those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Stern said. In analogy, if the spacecraft were flying over a city it would be able to count the individual buildings on the ground. New Horizons may also identify as-yet-unknown moons or rings around Pluto.
http://www.space.com/27946-pluto-spacecraft-new-horizons-wakeup.html (http://www.space.com/27946-pluto-spacecraft-new-horizons-wakeup.html)
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Piano size space-mobile with nuclear power source?
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Piano size space-mobile with nuclear power source?
http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Pluto/PlutoNewHorizons.html (http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Pluto/PlutoNewHorizons.html)
Electrical power. The spacecraft has a nuclear power supply to generate electricity over its many years of life.
Plutonium-238 fuel is used to power a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG), which is the probe's long-life battery. An RTG converts heat from naturally decaying plutonium into electricity.
The RTG uses plutonium dioxide ceramic pellets as a heat source and solid-state thermocouples that convert the plutonium's heat energy to electricity.
edit:Incidentally, one of the smallest nuclear reactors is about the size of a garbage can
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Electrical power. The spacecraft has a nuclear power supply to generate electricity over its many years of life.
No, no, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 250 watts of electricity I need.