
New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto - nns
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589
======
kartikkumar
Quote from a friend of mine on the team:

"After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of
schedule."

Amazing!

The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this
system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to
further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt.

Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the volume of
discoveries generated by MESSENGER and Cassini, and the wealth of knowledge
that New Horizons is going to generate, it's such a shame that my favourite
planet, Uranus, is likely not going to be visited in my lifetime. I spent my
PhD studying the mysterious outer ring system of Uranus, and I'm 100% positive
that a close-up view of the entire system would blow our minds.

Somebody who solves/disrupts science communication deserves a Nobel Prize.

 _EDIT: Fixed typos_

~~~
chasing
Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here
we go:

If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about
the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive
well enough to send back data.

Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly
into the surface of the planet.

Is it simply that we have no way to build something that could both survive
such an impact _and_ be complex enough to do anything useful afterwards? Or
might it create too much destruction on Pluto's surface? Or some combination
of those?

Edit:

I mean, it worked when we went to the Moon: [http://gallerytpw.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/Georges-M%C3...](http://gallerytpw.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/Georges-M%C3%A9li%C3%A8s_Le-voyage-dans-la-Lune.jpg)

Edit 2:

Not literally a bullet. I'm aware of the speed difference between NH and a
bullet. ;-)

~~~
grinich
A bullet travels about 1,700 MPH. New Horizons is going about 36,300 MPH.

The probe weighs 480 kilograms, so it's kinetic energy is approximately 63.2
Gigajoules. For reference, this is like 15 tonnes of TNT released on impact.
Hard to make something that survives those kind of conditions.

~~~
ceejayoz
Plus, probes that far out have worse-than-dialup transmission rates. It takes
42 minutes to return a single photo from the LORRI camera. Bursting large
amounts of data out in a short period of time before impact isn't feasible.

[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2015/0130080...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2015/01300800-talking-to-pluto-is-hard.html)

~~~
MichaelGG
You would put something else in orbit and have high bandwidth communication to
it and relay from there.

~~~
calinet6
Putting something else in orbit is the hard part.

~~~
planteen
The relay doesn't have to be in orbit around Pluto, it could be trailing the
impacter and fly by. Deep Impact did something like this with a comet.

------
Arjuna
In honor of Clyde William Tombaugh [1], the astronomer who discovered Pluto, a
canister [2] containing his ashes is on-board the New Horizons space probe. It
reads:

 _" Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of
Pluto and the Solar System's 'Third Zone.' Adelle and Muron's boy, Patricia's
husband, Annette and Alden's father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend:
Clyde W. Tombaugh (1906 - 1997)."_

A fitting tribute.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh)

[2]
[http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_28/1109391/150706...](http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_28/1109391/150706-ashes_7dd0a2249a8eb96eedd34f0c5687f931.nbcnews-
fp-360-360.jpg)

~~~
gambiting
It's interesting that by sending his remains on that probe we basically
guaranteed that at least some human remains will survive millions of years in
interstellar space, unless of course, New Horizons collides with
something(which I guess it will, given enough time?).

~~~
drzaiusapelord
It would be fitting I think if aliens found his ashes considering he's was
something of an ET evangelist and eventually claimed some of his mysterious
sightings (green fireballs and glowing rectangles moving in unnatural ways)
were probably of ET origin and its unscientific to dismiss this out of hand.
Wiki:

Although our own solar system is believed to support no other life than on
Earth, other stars in the galaxy may have hundreds of thousands of habitable
worlds. Races on these worlds may have been able to utilize the tremendous
amounts of power required to bridge the space between the stars..." Tombaugh
stated that he had observed celestial phenomena which he could not explain,
but had seen none personally since 1951 or 1952. "These things, which do
appear to be directed, are unlike any other phenomena I ever observed. Their
apparent lack of obedience to the ordinary laws of celestial motion gives
credence."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh#Interest_in_UFO...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh#Interest_in_UFOs)

~~~
LoSboccacc
if we were to humanize alien that much, I'd see more likely for his ashes to
become cosmetics for their gullible upper middle class.

------
ringshall
Interesting note, as of today, the US is the first country to have successful
spacecraft missions visit all of the classical planets.

There is one big exception, of course: the Soviet Union was the first to have
a spacecraft visit Earth, with Spunink.

This category is completely arbitrary, especially given that Pluto is now
considered a minor planet. Still, it's an achievement of note.

    
    
      Mercury - 1974, Mariner 10
    
      Venus --- 1962, Mariner 2
    
      Earth --- 1957, Sputnik 1
    
      Mars* --- 1965, Mariner 4
    
      Jupiter - 1973, Pioneer 10
    
      Saturn -- 1979, Pioneer 11
    
      Uranus -- 1986, Voyager 2
    
      Neptune - 1989, Voyager 2
    
      Pluto --- 2015, New Horizons
    

* The Soviet Union launched several probes to Mars before the US did, but those probes failed. This may be true of other planets as well.

edit: formatting

~~~
kohanz
Not to shoot the messenger, but it annoys me when these things are viewed
through the lens of artificial divisions such as nations. I understand that
space exploration has been used as a tool to further many political machines,
but it seems silly to me, especially when staring at a picture as beautiful as
this from a distance that makes Earth seem so small, to think about the people
living on this planet as anything other than humans, rather than citizens of
different countries. It just feels divisive where it should really feel
uniting. (Kumbaya!)

I really hope we someday get to the point where no one really cares what
"country" achieved the next space exploration milestone.

edit: To be fair, I am really heartened when I see how international the teams
that do work in the space station generally are. We've come a long way.

~~~
tgcordell
Competition breeds innovation. Yes, we are one planet and one species, but our
species is Human and we have an innate nature to compete!

~~~
dalke
Competition _may_ breed innovation, but surely it's not the truism you
suggest.

Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not
lead to useful innovation -
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-
inter...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-internal-
markets-nourish-innovation-the-case-of-sears/)

(It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly
innovative.)

Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate.

Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origins)
for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we
someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the
next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness.

Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer
teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could
still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the
point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt,
Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood
insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic
institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense
of national identity.

I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be
healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost
nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private
competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into
being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space
exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for
large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of
how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual
countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as
Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use -
impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things:
[http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-
were-...](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-a-
country/)

~~~
dalke
There was no ancient Greece nation. I suspect you mean it as a placeholder for
the Hellenic era, or perhaps the kingdom Macedonia.

But as to the issue, I recently listened to a lecture about the process of
deciding what the European nations would be after the First World War. The
different nations had wildly different ideas of how to decide what was their
national territory and people. The people of Alsace speak German, but the
French said (and I paraphrase) "look at their love of wine and joie de vivre -
they are French, but were forced to speak German".

Or of a farmer in central Europe, when asked "what are you?" answered
"farmer", and then "where are you from?" brought the name of the local town.
When asked more insistently, he said "Catholic". The concept of nation made no
sense to him.

The concept of nationhood is quite complicated. Is Scotland a nation? India
during the British Empire? It's more complicated than I want to get into. But
in the context of the tgcordell comment, which tries to connect species
imperatives with national competition, I mean to point out that the concept of
'nation' is too new to really have an evolutionary component. (And if it does,
it's built on cooperation.)

I don't deny that proxy conflict can be healthy, though proxy conflict in
Korea wasn't all that healthy for those involved. Is it possible to determine
the healthy conflict beforehand, or is it something that's mostly done after
the fact?

~~~
anigbrowl
_placeholder for the Hellenic era_

Yes.

I agree with your general points, but while many people would certainly have
been unaware of or indifferent to a national concept I think people in cities
on major trade routes or in power centers like Rome would certainly have been
aware of other places and would have been broadly aware of their own
significance (although this awareness was doubtless concentrated among a
social, military and business elite).

------
stygiansonic
As a child, I loved reading about space and astronomy. I think I pretty much
read every book about these topics my local town's library. (It wasn't a large
{town, library}) Isaac Asimov's non-fiction books were among my favourites.

I never imagined that now we'd be getting the level of detail seen in these
photos of Pluto (level of detail akin to a Moon shot), which until now, only
existed in my mind from various artistic impressions. I can only imagine how
the folks on the New Horizons team feel after seeing the results of their work
after so much time and effort.

~~~
rootbear
Amen. I work at NASA and I'm gobsmacked at the beauty of the New Horizons
imagery. I can't wait to see the good stuff.

Isaac Asimov's science essay collections had a profound effect on me. I
learned physics years ahead of when I would have in school by reading these
essays and learning how to do calculations involving kinetic energy, mass,
acceleration, etc. Even more important, those essays helped me learn how to
think like a scientist. Asimov's secular humanist world view also influenced
my own world view greatly. I met him several times at various SF conventions
and I miss him.

~~~
abecedarius
Not just essays; he wrote something like a real physics textbook at high-
school level, which I learned from as a teenager. (Not in school, of course.
IIRC it was more illuminating than my actual high-school physics text.)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Physics)

------
japhyr
The images we've been seeing the last few weeks, which grew by a few pixels
every day or so, were exciting. I read about how much higher resolution the
images would be as the probe reached its closest point in the flyby. But I had
no idea how striking the best images would be.

When I opened this article, my jaw dropped. I never in my life expected to see
Pluto in this level of detail. I always imagined it would be just a cold ball
of rock. This is absolutely amazing.

And there's this still: _Images set to be released on Wednesday will be more
than 10 times the resolution of those already published._

------
adventured
A larger image was just posted to the New Horizons Twitter account.

Image:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ32XAEVAAAp_8T.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ32XAEVAAAp_8T.png:large)

Tweet:

[https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/62092320062141235...](https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/620923200621412352)

~~~
smackfu
I bet the scientists just hate that this stuff is shared on Twitter. They made
a big deal that this was transmitted from New Horizons as a compressed image
(to transmit it quickly) and then it gets mauled by Twitter's recompression
too.

~~~
natep
It's not like these copies replace the higher-res ones. Not a project
scientist, but I'd rather as many people as possible see some image than only
a few see only any at all.

~~~
smackfu
The problem is when people zoom in and "see" things in the JPEG compression
artifacts.

Also when they release the pic on Twitter in crappy form _before_ they release
it in uncompressed form.

~~~
mixmastamyk
It says png on the file and headers.

~~~
smackfu
Ah, it does! They did the original "sneak peak" on Instagram and this was the
file: [https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xfa1/t51.28...](https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xfa1/t51.2885-15/11311925_687877714680167_484233801_n.jpg)

I hear so many complaints about Twitter recompressing pics I figured that
would happen here.

------
markbnine
What we need now is a real-time play-by-play by Carl Sagan. . e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8eqYVFgzIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8eqYVFgzIU)

Or Larry Soderblom on Triton. Try to dig up the full "Encounter with Neptune".
. . classic. . . first ten minutes -
[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8zzlq_encounter-with-
neptu...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8zzlq_encounter-with-neptune-www-
document_tech)

------
Mahn
Apparently it snows on Pluto:

 _Pluto has an atmosphere. It snows on Pluto and the snow sublimates back into
the atmosphere._

[https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/620932748824285184](https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/620932748824285184)

~~~
Splendor
With a 248-year orbit around the sun those must be some long winters.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The long winters aren't so bad, although sometimes it's a bit disconcerting
when the commander thinks aloud.

------
buyx
Plutos "demotion" from being a fully-fledged planet makes me wonder if it
would have been politically feasible to start the New Horizons project if the
redefinition had happened a few years earlier.

Still, I am pleasantly surprised by the excitement this mission is garnering.

~~~
mturmon
It is well-known that the New Horizons PI, Alan Stern, had a strong distaste
for the "demotion" of Pluto. (An extreme example, this interview:
[http://www.space.com/12710-pluto-defender-alan-stern-
dwarf-p...](http://www.space.com/12710-pluto-defender-alan-stern-dwarf-planet-
interview.html), which is rather ... over the top in terms of its arguments.)

~~~
yellowapple
I actually think his core argument - that a "planet" should be determined by
its physical characteristics rather than where its orbit happens to lie - is
pretty reasoned and grounded in logic. I'm on his side about the whole
"clearing the neighborhood" criterion; it's totally arbitrary, and has less to
do with the object itself than it does with where that object lives.

------
chasing
This is awesome. Congratulations to everyone who pulled this off (and fingers
crossed that the data gets back successfully).

Everyone has earned the right to chant the name of whatever country they feel
like.

~~~
yellowapple
Sealand! Sealand! Sealand!

------
mathattack
This gives me a tremendous amount of Pride in humanity, even though I had
nothing to do with it. (Other than perhaps pay a little bit of taxes)

------
blakecaldwell
It kills me we're not gonna orbit Pluto.

~~~
rootbear
In the press conference, the PI was asked about a future mission. He said that
he has thought about orbiters and landers and considers the Pluto system to be
a valuable science target. But he said that we need to study the New Horizons
data for some years, to better design the next mission. At this time, they
wouldn't know what the best instruments to send would be. Also, it is far from
clear how to send a mission to Pluto that takes a reasonable amount of time to
get there (9 years, in the case of New Horizons) but can also stop when it
gets there. Cassini took almost seven years to reach Saturn and the orbital
insertion burn was something like ninety minutes! I'm not sure how fast it was
going at the time, compared to New Horizons at Pluto, but the point is, if you
want to get there quickly, you go fast, but then it's hard to stop.

~~~
smackfu
> At this time, they wouldn't know what the best instruments to send would be.

There's an interesting BBC documentary series on the planets, called The
Planets, that has an episode covering the Voyager probes. They had to do some
quick redesigns on them after Pioneer 10 and 11 visited the outer planets and
found fun stuff like radiation and unexpected rings. They said that if they
hadn't had the earlier probes, Voyager would have been fried when it got to
the system.

~~~
scrumper
I second that recommendation, and it's currently on Netflix. It's a good
documentary series. A little long in the tooth now, but only for the entirely
positive reason that we've done a fair bit more planetary science since it was
made.

------
lmorris84
Does anyone know how they colour correct these images?

I'm guessing there isn't a robotic arm holding up a test card in front of the
camera :-)

~~~
prewett
I think they usually have a black and white camera with filters of specific
wavelengths, some of which roughly correspond to red, green, blue, and they
combine them. The color pictures I've seen from Mars and Cassini usually say
"approximate true color."

~~~
Freaky
They have no green (495-570nm) filter, just panchromatic (400-975nm), blue
(400-550nm), red (540-700nm), near-IR (780-975nm) and narrow-band methane
(860-910nm).

------
outworlder
Today's XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/1551/](http://xkcd.com/1551/)

------
gesman
Super achievement.

Imagine writing a piece of code see the test results only 9.5 years after !

~~~
ben174
And I thought testing in CI was slow.

------
lmm
> Nix is estimated to be about 35km across, and Hydra about 45km in diameter.
> Kerberos and Hydra are a lot smaller

Is one of those Hydras supposed to be something else?

~~~
xyclos
Probably. Styx is the other one.

~~~
acheron
I'm still disappointed none of them were named "Acheron".

------
burkek
This is incredible. Note that this is also a true representation of Pluto's
colours by merging a high resolution greyscale picture taken by the #1 camera
"Lorri" and a second (lower resolution) colour picture from the #2 camera
"Ralph".

------
andyjohnson0
There's a detailed and informative article about the design of the New
Horizons probe on the British Interplanetary Society site at [1]. An even more
detailed description of the science payload can be found at [2].

[1] [http://www.bis-space.com/2015/07/13/14875/inside-new-
horizon...](http://www.bis-space.com/2015/07/13/14875/inside-new-horizons)

[2] [http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-payload-
overview.pdf](http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-payload-overview.pdf)

~~~
andor436
For the Twitter-inclined follow Emily Lakdawalla [1] - she is usually mere
seconds behind the actual data, which is pretty amazing.

[1] [https://twitter.com/elakdawalla](https://twitter.com/elakdawalla)

------
huuu
It seems Pluto has much less craters than our moon. Is this because our moon
is much closer to a heavy body which attracts all kinds of objects?

Anyway: wow! The quality of this preview is already amazing. Waiting for the
high res version :)

~~~
cgriswald
I think the main reason is that Pluto has an active atmosphere; it snows.
Plutos icy surface may be somewhat active as well, so craters may disappear
over time in a way that the craters on the moon cannot.

However, there may be other factors:

1\. As you note, the mass of the Earth-Moon system is much greater than the
mass of the Pluto-Charon system.

2\. In the Earth-Moon system, the moon is the outer protector. In the Pluto
system, there are five smaller protectors and Pluto is the protected.

3\. The inner solar system is a small, dense region closer to the gravity of
the sun and gas giants. Objects thrown in our direction are likely to stick
around. In contrast, the Kuiper Belt isn't very dense and objects thrown in
that direction not only have more places to go, but may be on their way out of
the solar system or into extended hyperbolic orbits.

3\. KBOs aren't very dense, so even impacts which occur may not create massive
craters.

------
artur_makly
So this got me thinking... is there a way to forecast our space-travel
capacity into the far future?

Could we conceivably create a formula that takes into account all of
humanity's previous milestones of technological breakthrough's and the
distances they have achieved for us.. and project where we could be 100, 500,
1000 yrs from now?

Perhaps there is a vague velocity pattern we can derive from a plethora of
historic data?

*apologies for not being very articulate today..im still in awe!

~~~
Cthulhu_
A formula? No, probably not; the thing with space exploration is that it
depends on the one hand on money, i.e. government funding or commercial
exploitation, and on the other on physics - getting something into space, let
alone propel it far away, is a very costly process when it comes to fuel and
whatnot required - which increases exponentially the more you want to achieve
out there.

Although companies like Virgin Intergalactic and SpaceX are working hard on
making it more affordable, thanks to some advancements. Still though,
practically speaking, getting anything into orbit is hard enough.

We'll probably see a manned Mars mission in our lifetime, but for anything
beyond that you'll probably have to read science fiction.

~~~
drjesusphd
> Still though, practically speaking, getting anything into orbit is hard
> enough.

As the saying goes, "low Earth orbit is halfway to anywhere in the solar
system".

------
struct
I remember reading about Pluto in dozens of space books when I was a child,
all filled with beautiful images sent from Voyager I and II, I'm so excited
that we can finally add Pluto to that roster

Also, it's so incredible that the New Horizon's team has managed to get to
something so small and far away!

~~~
digi_owl
That is a moving target no less.

------
ishanr
Its so amazing to live in a time we found the Higgs boson and flying by Pluto.

------
mattlutze
"Jingoism: the feelings and beliefs of people who think that their country is
always right and who are in favor of aggressive acts against other countries."
[1]

Can we please stop comparing a success chant with "aggressive acts against
other countries"?

Unnecessary nationalism, sure. Jingoism is hyperbole.

1: [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jingoism](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/jingoism)

~~~
bargl
Your comment confused the heck out of me. Can you clarify a little more? Did I
miss something in the article?

~~~
mattlutze
Sorry, this was meant as a reply to a different thread.

Context was:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884196)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884930)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884324)

------
StealthMountain
Is there a mountain hiding on Pluto?

------
fit2rule
I'm more than a little disappointed that we haven't got gleaming alien cities
in the viewfinder this time, but I guess there's still a chance that Ceres is
going to give humanity the boost it needs.

:)

------
zkhalique
Why didn't it stop to look around? Smell the proverbial roses? Wasn't that its
main mission? Or is it now going to check out other Kuiper belt objects?

~~~
ramidarigaz
It was going much too fast to stop (given the available propellant). Also,
that would have extended the transit time significantly. On the upside, it's
sounding like the Kuiper belt is a really interesting place, so we'll get to
see much more!

------
lfmunoz4
Why can't we see any stars or light in the background?

~~~
el_duderino
The reason that the stars do not show up on the image is that the stars are so
dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure.

~~~
tlb
Since you can see stars near the moon, you should be able to see stars near
Pluto, which is less bright. More likely, there are no stars in the (very
narrow) angle of the camera.

~~~
calinet6
This is exactly the reason. Properly exposed with a camera, you cannot see
stars near the moon.

This is exactly the same effect. There are probably not any stars of high
enough magnitude to be visible on the same exposure with such a bright object.
In fact, there are definitely not: otherwise, we would see them on the image.

For more proof, check out some earlier navigation images taken by New Horizons
as it approached pluto, greatly overexposing Pluto and Charon in order to see
the stars around them:
[https://twitter.com/NewHorizonsBot/status/615264675975065600](https://twitter.com/NewHorizonsBot/status/615264675975065600)

It's difficult to imagine Pluto, being so far out, being "bright," but
remember that light intensity falls off at an inverse square rate with
distance. New Horizons being so close to pluto, it's actually an extremely
bright object relative to the stars behind it.

In fact, NASA did a fun twitter experiment where they gave people the exact
time at their location on Earth when it would appear as bright as noon on
Pluto. You can see many resulting images here, illustrating how bright the
Pluto surface might look were you standing on it:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23plutotime](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23plutotime)

~~~
tlb
I stand corrected.

------
pavel_lishin
Is the clip at the top just audio with a black screen? That seems like the
least useful thing; I'd wager that any blind visitors have screen readers.

------
meerita
I hope we can reach even faster speeds for the next missions. This one made it
relatively quick, the next one can be faster?

------
Trombone12
Does anyone know of a KSP mod or similar that reproduces the current status of
interplanetary probes in the solar system?

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yellowapple
I don't know about reproducing statuses, but between the KASA pack and the
Real Solar System mod, I'm sure one could have a blast recreating quite a few
real missions (though I think KASA focuses more on manned missions than
unmanned).

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chatterbeak
Wikipedia says the data rate from Pluto is effectively about 1 KBit/second.
That's why it takes so long to get the photos....

I'd like to find more detailed information about the hardware and software on
this thing. It's amazing that it was launched back in 2006. My 2006 Mac Pro is
basically useless now....

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e0m
Traveling at 16km/s for 9.5 years would dilate time by almost 300 minutes! Not
only is there a 4.5 hr delay because of the speed of light, there's an extra
300 min of relativity correction.

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rootbear
Whoa! I hadn't thought about that. The speed of New Horizons hasn't been
constant, of course, but the accumulated time difference is probably close to
what you calculated. There would also be a correction due to it being farther
out of the Sun's gravity well, but that's a much trickery calculation.

~~~
ars
(Just a note: His math is off.)

You also have to account for the dilation caused by the force of launch
itself.

But then you have to subtract the dilation of Earth.

> There would also be a correction due to it being farther out of the Sun's
> gravity well

Because it is in free-fall relative to the Sun there is no Solar gravitational
dilation.

