Charles Foster Kane
Rosebud
I think the USSR's Venera 13 lander did a pretty good job of capturing Venus's hellscape, especially considering this was 1982. The lander lasted for more than an hour.
Looks like an ocean of pee.
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Pluto New Horizons |OT| New images. Pluto/Charon still geologically active
- Thread starter GK86
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Looks like an ocean of pee.
A tropical paradise!
eyeball_kid
Member
If your pee is made of sulfuric acid, sure.
That documentary is excellentI watched that Europa documentary, it clearly showed aliens on Europa - big ass ones that light up.
I really like Europa Report.
More like a sky full of egg farts.
The Cowboy
Member
A thread about humans sending a probe to Pluto and we have talk of sulfuric acid pee and egg fart skies - love it
Always-honest
Banned
Yes...
eyeball_kid
Member
How did you guys predict where Pluto would be when you sent @NASANewHorizons to space, since we and pluto are always in motion?
We kept taking pictures of it from the s/c and adjusting the orbit as needed. Kinda neat uh?
When will we receive more detailed imagery? #PlutoFlyby #Pluto @NASANewHorizons
Late tonight it will start coming in. When we are all in bed asleep since in the AM we will be back to look at them
any pictures of the smaller moons available yet?
Yes. we've resolved the big ones, just a couple of pixels. It does show us that they are football shaped.. JimGreen
what can we reasonably learn from our fly-into the Kuiper belt? I would imagine most of the real data would require regolith....?
KBos have only been observed remotely through telescopes as points of light. KBOs are relics from the earliest times of solar system formation, born at the edge of our solar system's planetary disk. We have never been up close to one before Pluto. - Carey
Are we going to land on the Pluto someday ? Have we missed opportunity to do this now ?
Only if we can come up with a compelling scientific reason to do so. JimGreen
What are the chances of New Horizons lasting as long as the Voyagers have?
Its radioactive power supply will last into the 2030s. Then it will be too cold for the s/c to operateJimGreen
Why do you think Charon has more craters than Pluto?
One possibility is that Charon has no atmosphere to freeze out and cover up craters with surface ices. - Carey
We kept taking pictures of it from the s/c and adjusting the orbit as needed. Kinda neat uh?
When will we receive more detailed imagery? #PlutoFlyby #Pluto @NASANewHorizons
Late tonight it will start coming in. When we are all in bed asleep since in the AM we will be back to look at them
any pictures of the smaller moons available yet?
Yes. we've resolved the big ones, just a couple of pixels. It does show us that they are football shaped.. JimGreen
what can we reasonably learn from our fly-into the Kuiper belt? I would imagine most of the real data would require regolith....?
KBos have only been observed remotely through telescopes as points of light. KBOs are relics from the earliest times of solar system formation, born at the edge of our solar system's planetary disk. We have never been up close to one before Pluto. - Carey
Are we going to land on the Pluto someday ? Have we missed opportunity to do this now ?
Only if we can come up with a compelling scientific reason to do so. JimGreen
What are the chances of New Horizons lasting as long as the Voyagers have?
Its radioactive power supply will last into the 2030s. Then it will be too cold for the s/c to operateJimGreen
Why do you think Charon has more craters than Pluto?
One possibility is that Charon has no atmosphere to freeze out and cover up craters with surface ices. - Carey
Version 3.0
Member
The price tag isn't even half that sad story; I'm scared to know how many people (particularly in, say, Congress) would look at that sentence and think "We could've had 2 more F-35s and instead we got some boring pictures of Pluto?".
In some ways this is quiet bittersweet. We learned a lot more about Pluto and we know what it looks like from upclose, and there is so much unexpectedly complex features it's awesome. At the same time it's just a single flyby and I wish there was something that could have stayed to keep studying it. Unfortunately Pluto's gravity is so weak and the spacecraft is going so fast that there wouldn't be enough fuel to put it in orbit. It will be a very long time before we see Pluto like this again.
Faster than an australian ISP, YAY!!
Pluto, a new song by Taylor Swift
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"
I think the USSR's Venera 13 lander did a pretty good job of capturing Venus's hellscape, especially considering this was 1982. The lander lasted for more than an hour.
That's hardcore. Also reminded me of the hellish landscapes of Doom64
eyeball_kid
Member
It is indeed bittersweet, though there's tons of data and pictures of Pluto and its moons that will be trickling back from NH over the next year. And if NH gets additional funding, we still have a Kuiper Belt Object to look forward to, which we really know nothing about.
Maybe we will see more cool things later out there.
I think it's just that we're hitting our technology's limits of precision. For instance, we know the mass, velocity, and location of (for instance) Jupiter down to a bunch of decimal places, but that doesn't mean we know exactly how hard Jupiter will be pulling on a particular spacecraft, on a date many years in the future. There is always some small uncertainty. Similarly, we can tell the spacecraft to fire its thrusters for "exactly" 24.32 seconds, but we'll undoubtedly miss that mark by some number of microseconds in one direction or the other.
Those sorts of tiny, initially unmeasurable, errors will build up over the years. So every year or so, we'll measure that error to the best of our ability, and instruct the spacecraft to make a tiny correction. The correction will not be perfect either. After another year or so, we'll do it again. Gradually, we get closer and closer to the "perfect" course. I believe the NASA dude said that New Horizons got to Pluto 70 seconds earlier than what they targeted. Good enough.
Oh yeah I am really looking forward to the observations of other Kuiper Belt Objects. That is one of the pluses to not just sticking to Pluto.
How come Voyager 1 could take a picture of Earth but New Horizons can't?
Now I really want a high-res version of this picture to print a poster:
How come Voyager 1 could take a picture of Earth but New Horizons can't?
Now I really want a high-res version of this picture to print a poster:
Voyagers camera was moveable. Also if new horizons was turned to face earth then the sun would burn out the imager.
so far away?? isn't the sun relatively small from the Kuiper Belt?
I really wish we'd get a ton of lander programs to Venus, Europa and Titan. The Soviet Venera program was awesome, I'd love a repeat of that with current technology so we could get a lot more photos from the surface.
Venus intrigues me a lot because it once might have been like Earth and it could very well be what Earth will become in millions of years.
I thought New Horizons has to turn around every time to transmit to Earth?
Venus intrigues me a lot because it once might have been like Earth and it could very well be what Earth will become in millions of years.
I thought New Horizons has to turn around every time to transmit to Earth?
Voyager 1 wasn't positioned to take scientifically useful pictures of anything anymore, and they were about to permanently shut the cameras down regardless to reduce the electronic load.
New Horizons needs to be kept in good shape for another KBO flyby.
blueteainfusion
Member
It is, but it's still too bright for the NH's sensitive cameras.
Other probes took pictures of Earth with the big planets (like Saturn) eclipsing Sun. But right now Earth would appear to close to our star not to be lost in the Sun's corona.
It does, but the radio dish is mounted perpendicular to the cameras. So when it's transmitting to us, the cameras are pointing off into the ether. I'm sure they've passed over the sun before, though, and it's taking some shots looking back at Pluto and the moons after the flyby, so it'll be pointed in the general direction of the sun. I don't think the sensors are so sensitive that they'd fry instantly, especially at that range.. the sun's not exactly all that bright out there.
sono
Member
Thanks for reminding me - I just fired up the Nasa Eyes app and selected the Juno Mission and used the fast forward feature to get this shot..
New Horizon's camera(s) is facing back towards the sun as we speak. It's kinda hard to take pictures of the dark side of Pluto, and its backlit atmosphere, without doing that. NASA waited until now to do this for two reasons:
- The sun is relatively dim now, and...
- Even if the camera is damaged, they already got most of the money shots.
privitsan02
Member
I'm pretty happy by how much social media responded to this event, despite Zayn and Harry of One Direction being perched at the top of the trending topics on Twitter for the whole day...
Hope one day society as a whole is more into astronomy and the mysteries of the universe. Maybe if we discover a new planet in our solar system or aliens it'll get peoples attention.
Best wishes.
Hope one day society as a whole is more into astronomy and the mysteries of the universe. Maybe if we discover a new planet in our solar system or aliens it'll get peoples attention.
Best wishes.
Yep that seems like the only thing that'll get people excited. I swear I'm the only one losing it over today's news on my ig and fb
.Lovely Salsa
Banned
Will we visit and digg europa in our lifetime?
Rabbi_Vole
Banned
Yep that seems like the only thing that'll get people excited. I swear I'm the only one losing it over today's news on my ig and fb
My 6 yr old daughter wasn't very impressed. She asked if they found aliens.
And yet... the much smaller Charon is covered in craters. Curious. It's almost as if you're spouting shit you haven't the slightest clue about.
Digging through that much ice would be a massive engineering challenge on earth, let alone Europa. Besides we're banned from going there.
Rabbi_Vole
Banned
I read somewhere the atmosphere and tectonic activity have helped hide/ erode Plutos potmarks .
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Huh? Why are we banned from going there again?
They chatted about this during the conference yesterday. They were hoping/expecting that the reflected sunlight from Charon would illuminate the dark side of Pluto enough that they would be able to grab some photos.
That is such a fabulously clever way of doing things particularly when it involves a series of objects billions of kilometres away with four and a half hour delay between instructions!
Space Monster
Neo Member
imnotsayingitsaliensbutitsaliens.jpg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=38EDhpxzn2g
Unfortunately this inexplicably cuts out the money shot at around 2:14 but you'll get the idea.
The Sum of Zero
Member
Just a few minutes until we get the "phone home" right?
Space Monster
Neo Member
One minute.
Yeah, I hear ya. I don't think people really understand (or care) just how little we knew about Pluto before this mission. I mean, it really wasn't much beyond "we know it's there" if you think about it. Now look at what we know. I saw one of the animations the other day that showed that Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other. Did we even know that before a week or so ago?
People don't want knowledge anymore, it seems. This may just be "knowledge for the sake of knowledge", but dammit, I like it when I know something today that I didn't know yesterday. I'm waiting with baited breath for the first closeup images, this whole thing is awesome as far as I'm concerned.
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