"This is the last and most detailed image of Pluto sent to Earth before the moment of closest approach - 7:49 a.m. EDT today... This stunning image of the dwarf planet was captured from New Horizons at about 4 p.m. EDT on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles (766,000 kilometers) from the surface."
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102 comments:
A terrific accomplishment. Kudos to the team that brought this to fruition.
We won't get higher res images for quite awhile, because New Horizons is too busy taking data to transmit any of it home. It is being buffered on the spacecraft. We should get an "I'm healthy" message from the craft at 19:53 CST (fingers crossed, knock on wood).
Here's a list of spacecraft activity during the flyby.
Looks like a planet to me.
It has a heart!!! <3
"It has a heart!!! <3"
That is what they're calling that feature.
Cool, but whats important here is the shirt the mission controller was wearing. Could it in anyway be offensive to the Perpetually Offended? What does he think about women in science? Has he ever told any off-color jokes in the lab? Do his male associates make more than the female one? Serious stuff.
After 9 years and 3+ billion miles New Horizons arrived at closest encounter 72 seconds ahead of schedule.
Yay, Newton!
"we"?
We've reached Pluto. Onward to Goofy!
I wouldn't bring up the topic of manned mission around here, Sebastian. Not of you know what's good for you.
Looks more like a bosomy bodice to me.
Enough of this Pluto bullshit. How are our relations with Muslims?
After 9 years and 3+ billion miles New Horizons arrived at closest encounter 72 seconds ahead of schedule.
Missed it by just over a minute. That's incredible.
"Looks more like a bosomy bodice to me."
The other side has donuts.
An addendum to my 7:23 comment; while New Horizons is not sending new data to Earth during the flyby, NASA does have images on the ground, transmitted as a safeguard as the spacecraft approached the planet (yes, I said it), that they haven't shown yet. Apparently, some of them may be released today.
Amazing.
Looking back, this has been NASA's second golden age, after they left the Shuttle and the ISS behind and went with the shotgun approach -- dozens of "small" projects like this one.
Compare the benefits of these dozens of projects to the benefits of the ISS, if you can find any.
You cannot say that the time of arrival was 7:49 am today, except as a somewhat inaccurate shorthand.
What you can say is that we are 9 hours away from possibly affecting what we see.
What we see is what happened 4 1/2 hours ago, and any signal we send will take a further 4 1/2 hours to get there.
The ISS gives human astronauts a place to go to. That's all.
"I wouldn't bring up the topic of manned mission around here, Sebastian. Not of you know what's good for you."
Meant to allude only to the likely discrepancy between the composition of the team that made it happen and the universal, all-inclusive we. No more humanned missions, please.
Maybe Pluto should have put a little make-up on before taking that photo.
I am Laslo.
"You cannot say that the time of arrival was 7:49 am today, except as a somewhat inaccurate shorthand."
Of course you can. At 7:49 CST the spacecraft was at closest approach. If the point you are making is that we don't have confirmation of that yet, you are correct. But there are few (if any) events that could have prevented it. It could have hit an object which altered its course, but that's about it. Can't wait for tonight's "phone home".
"Maybe Pluto should have put a little make-up on before taking that photo."
I think she's beautiful.
According to an article on Aviation Week this morning, they were aiming for a box 60x90 miles for optimum sensor performance. They hit the box dead center. That's some damned good navigation. JPL really knows how to handle these kinds of missions.
I only know of one significant navigation error that they've made and that was Mars Climate Orbiter back in 1999. Lockheed provided some ground software that gave JPL some data in English units instead of the required metric units and JPL didn't catch it. They hit the atmosphere of Mars too low and the vehicle was lost.
It's awesome and exciting. In general world news has been somewhat grim, and between Philae and the Pluto mission, it gives us literal space to hope.
Hello Pluto! For someone of my age, getting to meet you face to face in a sense is an unexpected life bonus.
And Pluto loves us, even though we demoted her. Self hating planet that she is.
"Hello Pluto! For someone of my age, getting to meet you face to face in a sense is an unexpected life bonus."
Amen. Clyde Tombaugh was kind of a personal hero when I was growing up.
Is it carrying politically correct truths for whoever finds it in interstellar space, is the question.
If it educates the universe, it will have been worthwhile. Something of lasting value.
All those planets that it slingshotted off of dropped into lower perigee orbits, by the way. That energy is not free.
Let's not forget the Muslim contribution in the form of algebra. The Islamic team. Though I suppose that was Arabic, not Islamic.
Without 0 binary would be all 1's.
Though all 1's is zero, in one's complement. It's hard avoid discovering 0 once you have binary.
After all the demotion talk, I expected something looking more chunky like an astoroid or comet. Finding a pretty sphere shaped object surprised me. Pluto is only 1/5 the size of our moon and yet obviously that's still big enough for gravity to do its planet shaping.
CWJ said...
Pluto is only 1/5 the size of our moon and yet obviously that's still big enough for gravity to do its planet shaping.
That would also depend on the amount of ice content. Ice is malleable at much lower pressures than rock.
There are all those rocks out there and no paper or scissors.
My computer, a Dell Inspiron 1200, has been on 24/7 since 2005, beating the spacecraft by one year. And it was on sale.
rhhardin said... [hush][hide comment]
My computer, a Dell Inspiron 1200, has been on 24/7 since 2005, beating the spacecraft by one year. And it was on sale.
7/14/15, 10:06 AM
I would truly be impressed IF you also say it has been running windows that entire time.
This is awesome. Just awesome. Too bad Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov didn't live to see this. They'd be sporting scierections big enough to be seen from Mars.
Amazing
I wonder just how brightly ( or dimly ) lit that would be if viewed by the naked eye at that range.
Is there enough light to read a book on Pluto?
Yes. During daylight on Pluto, the Sun would be almost 300 times as bright as the full Moon on Earth (1/900 times dimmer than full daylight on Earth).
So it's on to the Kuiper Belt now and Oort Cloud... That's a few thousands years of nothing.
looks like a planet to me
Looks like they got the memo about the shirts
"Once it reestablishes contact Tuesday night, it will take
16 months for New Horizons to send its cache of data — 10 years’ worth — back to Earth."
Boy, that's a long time to count on something not going wrong.
@ Original Mike, 12:01 PM
Clearly, all the vital minority members of the JPL/NASA team who were critical to adding diversity to Mission Control had all gone out for coffee and Newports when that photo was taken. How rude of the photog not to wait for their return before snapping that picture.
What a stunning achievement. Same for the Europeans with their comet lander. To think that for comparatively small money such grand things can be achieved makes the squandering of trillions on deadbeats and other gigantic wastes of money on politically driven junk truly depressing.
Alex said...
So it's on to the Kuiper Belt now and Oort Cloud... That's a few thousands years of nothing.
Not necessarily. After Pluto, they hope to do fly-bys of one or two Kuiper Belt objects. Last year, the New Horizons team asked for and received help from the Hubble Space Telescope operators to find a suitable target. They found one definite candidate and a couple more possible candidates. No word on when that encounter will take place, assuming NASA funds the extended mission.
I would truly be impressed IF you also say it has been running windows that entire time.
Windows XP. It's very stable.
In fact
$ uptime.sh
uptime 165:07:51:03 14284263 seconds 165 days ago at 05:41:45
(running Cygwin under Windows XP)
Truly a great moment for humanity....except that 99% of humanity would much rather see a photo of Kardashian ass.
Jonathan Coulton's ode to the pairing of Pluto and Charon and the demotion of Pluto, "I'm Your Moon."
Sad excuse for a sunrise
It's so cold out here
Ice and silence and dark skies
As we go round another year
Let them think what they like, we're fine
I will always be right here next to you
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
rhhardin said...
I would truly be impressed IF you also say it has been running windows that entire time.
Windows XP. It's very stable.
In fact
$ uptime.sh
uptime 165:07:51:03 14284263 seconds 165 days ago at 05:41:45
(running Cygwin under Windows XP)
7/14/15, 12:32 PM
OK, impressed.
I agree on the XP. I was one of their better releases. Vista was crap. 7 some better. 8 is OK but too much "surface" influences. Liked XP Pro and resisted upgrading as long as I could.
Have you [by chance] tried VirtualBox? I run Ubuntu, Snow Leopard, Win2008 Server, Win 7, and other OSs in it a la VMWare. Pretty darn good piece of software and the price is great [free].
(3*(1000^3))/(9*365*24) = 38,051 mph.
"At a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph (about 28,300 kph), it would have taken a Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri [closest star]."
Blogger rhhardin said...
My computer, a Dell Inspiron 1200, has been on 24/7 since 2005, beating the spacecraft by one year. And it was on sale.
uptime.sh
uptime 165:07:51:03 14284263 seconds 165 days ago at 05:41:45
Aren't there more than 165 days in 10 years?
I thought you didn't understand what it was all for.
uptime.sh
uptime 165:07:51:03 14284263 seconds 165 days ago at 05:41:45
Aren't there more than 165 days in 10 years?
That's a reboot for an offline virus scan, not a power-down.
They hit the box dead center. That's some damned good navigation. JPL really knows how to handle these kinds of missions.
There are two kinds of countries: those with the metric system and those who've landed men on the moon.
The uptime comes from the CPU internal clock
long long unsigned x;
__asm__ volatile (".byte 0x0f, 0x31" : "=A" (x));
I keep the same system to avoid bit rot. Graduate students eventually render every program inoperable through system improvements. But not if you never upgrade.
If the space thingy had system updates, it would have stopped working long ago around Mars.
God only knows if the _asm_ trick works in today's C compilers.
Original Mike wrote -
"Looks like they got the memo about the shirts"
Not the woman in the left foreground.
Blogger Fernandinande said...
(3*(1000^3))/(9*365*24) = 38,051 mph.
"At a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph (about 28,300 kph), it would have taken a Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri [closest star]."
No, at a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph (~5 miles per second), the Space Shuttle was never able to leave low Earth orbit. It never could've gone more than a few hundred miles high, much less to the moon or anywhere else. The minimum Earth escape velocity is about 7 miles per second, or roughly 25,200 MPH. New Horizons was a small vehicle (1054 pounds) launched on the most powerful booster we had at the time (Atlas V 551). It was launched directly into an Earth and solar escape trajectory at an Earth-relative velocity of 36,373 MPH, the fastest manmade thing ever launched from Earth. It only took New Horizons about 13 1/2 months to make it to Jupiter. By comparison, it took Voyager 1 about 26 1/2 months to make it there.
Here's some early analysis of that Pluto image sent yesterday. It'll be a while before we get any higher-resolution images from today's encounter. At that distance, the data rate is only about 1000 bits per second. It'll take about 2 months to get all of the latest data from Pluto.
Larry J said...
No, at a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph (~5 miles per second), the Space Shuttle was never able to leave low Earth orbit. It never could've gone more than a few hundred miles high, much less to the moon or anywhere else. The minimum Earth escape velocity is about 7 miles per second, or roughly 25,200 MPH.
But you never have to reach escape velocity to escape. Escape velocity is the velocity you would need at the earth's surface in order to be able to coast away from Earth forever ( assuming no wind resistance). If you had enough fuel to waste you could escape earth orbit without ever exceeding 1 mph.
And, of course, the maximum speed of 17,600 mph was the maximum speed the space shuttle went, not the maximum speed that it could go. All it would have needed to go faster was more fuel, either brought up as its payload, or ferried up on other rockets.
And, of course, the maximum speed of 17,600 mph was the maximum speed the space shuttle went, not the maximum speed that it could go. All it would have needed to go faster was more fuel, either brought up as its payload, or ferried up on other rockets.
From memory, the Shuttle carried about 18,000 pounds of hypergolic propellants to run the OMS engines. That was good for about 1000 feet per second delta-v. It was used for orbital insertion, attitude control, any orbital changes, and the reentry burn. Even if a Shuttle launched with extra propellant tanks in the cargo bay, it still wouldn't have enough delta-v to come close to escape velocity. Even if you brought up additional tanks on other boosters and somehow managed to lash them all together, you'd still have a hard time reaching escape velocity. The Shuttles simply had too much dead weight. That, and they also only had an on-orbit endurance of less than 3 weeks.
Note that I'm not suggesting it would be practical to use the shuttle for anything beyond low earth orbit. The shuttle has a lot of weight devoted to surviving reentry, in the form of tiles and aerodynamic shape. You wouldn't want to waste fuel accelerating all that weight that serves no (non)earthly purpose.
1) The Air Force should have an operating space fighter. We know that have an operating space drone. He who controls the orbits controls the planet.
2) For civilian use, the best option is to launch any interplanetary craft in segments on boosters and assembly it in LEO.
3) An interesting idea for the future would be some type of shuttle that endlessly circles the Earth and the Moon, using gravity for fuel. Earth and lunar landers would rendezvous with it for the trip.
In my #3 above I am not referring to the Enterprise class of shuttles, rather something that wouldn't be able to even enter an atmosphere.
Curious George said: Enough of this Pluto bullshit. How are our relations with Muslims?
Well, this Pluto bullshit began before General Holdren got the order to blow smoke up the asses of the Muslims. I'm surprised that Boastful Barry hasn't Tweeted a picture of him looking toward the heavens and taking total credit. Maybe he has!
I held on to Windows 2000 forever. Then Windows XP forever. Now I have something horrible. Also, my new computers seem to physically break much more often than my old ones. Or perhaps that the change in perception of time with age.
"It'll take about 2 months to get all of the latest data from Pluto."
I've read more than one place (here for example) that it'll take 16 months. Fascinating images at that link, BTW.
CWJ - no, this mission has confirmed that Pluto is larger than expected - the current figure is about 2/3rds the size of our moon.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/13/nasa-probes-early-pluto-data-shows-dwarf-planet-larger-than-anticipated
Let's not get on our high horse here. Before we keep crowing about this, I suggest we wait for the Brits and Greeks to release their pictures of the surface of Pluto, since they are no less exceptional than the USA.
It would make a great, Republican colony.
Rhythm and Balls: "It would make a great, Republican colony"
Most places would. Why should we exclude Pluto?
20 minutes to Phone Home.
MaxedOutMama,
You are both right and wrong. Right because Pluto is bigger (diameter) than expected. Wrong because diameter is not mass. Wrong because mass must still be less than 1/5 that of the moon. Also wrong because 2/3 the diameter is still less than half the volume.
None the less, your link supports ignoranceisbliss' comment to me above that with less density, gravity has more freedom to work it's magic.
All is right with the world.
Awwww. New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM) is Alice Bowman. Isn't that cute?
IOW, the spacecraft called home to MOM.
But it's healthy!
"Dwarf planet" is offensive. Pluto is a planet of diminutive diameter.
Dwarf planets—greedy and irascible, but good with an axe when there are orcs about.
I wondered why the closest approach was set to be just less than 7,750 miles, which is still a long distance if one wants to see fine surface details; it seems that distance assures that the New Horizon’s trajectory will be optimal for the good looks at all five known companions. I say companions rather than moons because Pluto is really a “double planet” with Charon with the common center of mass just barely within Pluto’s radius. The four other bodies are sufficiently massive to create an example of Newton’s three-body problem, their orbits are chaotic – impossible to predict outside a rather limited time frame. Eventually some will be ejected, perhaps toward the Inner Solar System to become a comet, perhaps into the Kuiper Belt, perhaps into interstellar space.
Rhythm and Balls wrote: It would make a great, Republican colony.
Typical proglodyte, can't even manage commas, let alone humor above grade-school level.
The pause works for people who have humor. Which Republicans don't.
Here it is Quaestor-style: A greatRepublican colony!
Run the two words together very fast.
GreatRepublican. GreatRepublican. GreatRepublican!
GreatRepublicanGreatRepublicanGreatRepublican!!!
The two words together like "Trump" and "humility"!
Or like "Trump" and "hair from Pluto"!
Do not laugh, young retrograde. Grunt and pant and chest beat!
Grammar Nazism forever!
Original Mike wrote: After 9 years and 3+ billion miles New Horizons arrived at closest encounter 72 seconds ahead of schedule... Yay, Newton!
Don't cheer ole Sir Isaac too loudly. If he really is in charge perhaps NH wouldn't be that far ahead of schedule. This may be an example of the Pioneer anomaly, which was supposedly explained in 2012 as the result of thermal recoil forces. New Horizons (what a shitty name for a spcecraft) was planned long before "thermal recoil force" was proposed as a source of unexpected acceleration, so countermeasures aren't part of it's design. Being off-schedule can and will effect the optimal flyby trajectory.
Typical proglodyte, caught with his poor education showing and he goes ballistic. I love it.
Mission status.
"the Pioneer anomaly, which was supposedly explained in 2012 as the result of thermal recoil forces."
You don't buy it ?
Putting the comma in was a deliberate choice, jack-off boy. It reduces the adjective "Republican" to the sort of common noun that fits it.
But it's good to know that this is the only way you can feel smart about yourself or even at all capable of making a point.
Make sure to let me know if my capitalization choices are off, also. Perhaps there were too many spaces between a word and some adjacent punctuation.
Picking at gnats is not a trait to be found in people capable of leading or guiding great countries. But your blindness to that is what makes you a reactionary. So great is your stifled sense of fascist orderliness.
When you're done, you can go cross-eyed staring at the burned out pixel in the lower corner of your screen.
Good night, Sir Asshat!
Original Mike wrote: You don't buy it ?
[NB, It being the thermal recoil explanation of Pioneer 10's unexpected delta-v.]
It's untested. The numbers work, but we're not at the end of physics yet. Nothing should be accepted based on the mathematics alone. Lorenz's numbers for the æther theory worked nicely on the slate, but not went tested by Michelson & Morley. Claudius Ptolemy's numbers worked well enough to predict eclipses and cast horoscopes for a thousand years, but we don't give them any credence today. I could cite a few dozen other examples from memory, but the point is made, I think. There are a host of unexpected phenomena cropping up in physics and astronomy every decade, particularly astronomy, because that is the realm dominated by gravity, the least understood force of nature.
Putting the comma in was a deliberate choice, jack-off boy.
I'm sure it was, which is why I laugh at your ineptitude. That's a garden variety comma splice that would earn you an F on any paper submitted to a university with academic standards above community college level. Well-educated people splice commas by accident. Only dilettantes misuse commas deliberately.
Your desperate effort to defend your ignorance is amusing. Any adult with an ounce of integrity and healthy self-deprecation would laugh and yell, "Typo!" R&B is not that type of person, obviously. You remind me of Pee-Wee Herman trying to explain his stupid bike accident with a haughty and transparent evasion. Keep it coming.
I would like to see a picture of the sun as seen from Pluto. 3 billion miles, plus 93 million is so far away!
Freeman Hunt said...
I held on to Windows 2000 forever. Then Windows XP forever. Now I have something horrible. Also, my new computers seem to physically break much more often than my old ones. Or perhaps that the change in perception of time with age.
I save computers that have XP on them. Right now I have six working desktops that run XP. Some of the CNC software I run only works on XP. So I have two that are actually running machines and four more in reserve.
@Patrick - I bet you get your wish. After NH passed closest approach, the images it took of Pluto were necessarily back towards the direction of the sun.
Rhythm and Balls said...
Shhhh. Really intelligent people are talking. I'm sure there's another thread that you'd be more comfortable with.
Questor @9.00
I think part of the reason is they want to occlude the sun as NH flies behind the planet. There is a lot more information to be gleaned about Pluto's atmosphere.
Rusty said...
I save computers that have XP on them. Right now I have six working desktops that run XP. Some of the CNC software I run only works on XP. So I have two that are actually running machines and four more in reserve.
7/15/15, 8:01 AM
As I noted up-thread, you could take advantage of today's faster hardware by loading VirtualBox on a Win8.1 system and running your XP/XP Pro within it. I run systems all the way back to Win Server 2000 and XP Pro this way as well as OSX. Lots of features, zero cost. If you have not seen it, worth a look...
Hey. thanks Todd. I look into that. There are a lot of older NC machines that have been converted to CNC with steppers and using XP and Mach3 as the systems driver. After Mach3 there's Linux CNC, but that's a whole other can of worms.
@ Rusty
I wish to second Todd's advice. I run VirtualBox on OS X hosts and have for several years. Even though VirtualBox is freeware it is stable, beautiful, and remarkably simple. There's no direct support, but there are user forums and how-tos aplenty. (Heck, you can probably get support right here!)
You'll find XP runs surprisingly well virtualized, assuming your CPU supports virtualization, that is. Tell me about your platform and I think I can advise you.
I think part of the reason is they want to occlude the sun as NH flies behind the planet.
It's likely to be 99.9% ice, which could give a useful absorption spectrograph, but if Pluto's atmosphere is like a comet's (good chance of that, btw) it will be coal-black and will refract zip
Rusty, what software do you use? I have been using OpenSCAD. It works like I think (programer) versus an "artist" (like that 123D software does). Would like to get a 5-axis system one day but until I win the lottery have to make do with a 3D printer...
"but if Pluto's atmosphere is like a comet's (good chance of that, btw) it will be coal-black and will refract zip"
I'm not sure what this means. They'll be looking for attenuation coefficients and absorption lines to determine atmospheric composition and a density profile, n'est-ce pas?
Todd. I'm using Mach3 for milling and Linux CNC for turning. Everyone I work with is using Mach3 because most of their machines are repurposed older machine tools. Linux CNC is more computer nerdy, but it accommodates lathes easier than Mach3. Mach3 is more machinist intuitive with a lot of canned cycles for things like pockets and arcs and bolt circles etc.
Kickstarter is representing a company that is making an expandable desktop 5 axis cnc for under(right now) $4000.00. It looks well made.
That's my take on it Mike. See what's in the atmosphere, if anything.
Rusty said...
Todd. I'm using Mach3 for milling and Linux CNC for turning. Everyone I work with is using Mach3 because most of their machines are repurposed older machine tools. Linux CNC is more computer nerdy, but it accommodates lathes easier than Mach3. Mach3 is more machinist intuitive with a lot of canned cycles for things like pockets and arcs and bolt circles etc.
Kickstarter is representing a company that is making an expandable desktop 5 axis cnc for under(right now) $4000.00. It looks well made.
7/15/15, 12:16 PM
Thanks for that information and yes, I did see that kickstarter project. Looks really good but I don't have that much "hobby" money handy. Will need to wait until prices come down some more, which I do expect if it follows the 3D printer curve. By the way, that is where I got my printer, from a kickstarter project. Kickstarter "was" a good system but seems to have been overrun with "suspect" tech projects; quite a number of "free energy" and "gravity drive" stuff as well as a bit of SJW app stuff. Oh well...
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