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Pluto New Horizons |OT| New images. Pluto/Charon still geologically active

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Chris R

Member
I've taken the available images (and animations in a few cases) from the New Horizons site and put them together in an animation, showing 45 days of approach to Pluto:

Thank you for animating this at a reasonable speed unlike that other gif that's been floating around.

Also, you should post this to /r/space
 

Markster

Member
Thank you for animating this at a reasonable speed unlike that other gif that's been floating around.

Also, you should post this to /r/space

Ran into issues doing just that... looks like my lockout has expired:
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/3d29y6/new_horizons_animated_view_of_its_approach_to/

Reposting for new page:
https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/620295450084704256
VWRRnIn.gif

Are those other specks the other moons?

I don't know! There was a speck in frame 43 that I wasn't sure what the deal was, but it came from NASA, so I left it:
LGpgWna.png
 

Lima

Member
Kinda crazy if you think about how long it took to reach Pluto and then they only have a 86 second window to actually take the best pictures. Talk about little room for error.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Wow, I can't wait to see the pictures from the next few days.

How long will they continue photographing Pluto after the flyby on Tuesday? Throughout the week?
 

lightus

Member
FFffffuuuccckkkk. This app is AWESOME!!! Thanks for the heads up mate!

Yeah, for sure! I thought it was neat and figured some Gaffers may too!



Does anyone know where I can look more into how New Horizons is communicating with us? I've never really looked into it. Sending information billions of miles is a bit crazy. In depth articles welcome if anyone has them!
 

owlbeak

Member
Man the new photo is amazing. I cannot wait for Tuesday and subsequent months as we get the super hi res photos of this place! :D
 

Jedi2016

Member
How long will they continue photographing Pluto after the flyby on Tuesday? Throughout the week?
Mostly the moons, I think. From the simulation I saw, it won't be photographing much once its past, mostly because it won't be able to see much. It'll be on the dark side forever after that. I assume some shots through the atmosphere to check composition and such (Pluto does have an atmosphere?), but probably not much else. It's going to be taking a shitton of pictures over the next couple of days, though, it'll take time to transmit them all back.
 
I already know what's on planet Yuggoth. Mostly crab people, some elder cities, and some brains in jars that realize they may have overestimated the value of infinite knowledge.

Fungi.jpg
 
How exactly do they connect to the satellite? Is it encrypted or could any hacker with a satellite dish tap into it?

Not with this or the curiosity rover or any interplanetary vehicle.

The reason is because you won't be able to even establish a connection, NASA can do it because it has access to the DSN (Deep Space Network), otherwise there is no way to communicate. Actual communication is not encrypted itself. NASA doesn't need it because nothing important is being sent (like secret data etc) and nobody will be able to access it in any way because they don't have access to the DSN. Theoretically, you could build a DSN yourself but that is incredibly expensive and impossible to hide due to size and the geographical placements they need to be in so it has a lot of political issues as well.

It's more probable to get unauthorised access to the DSN itself somehow. Even if countries like Russia or China managed to build their own DSN strong enough for these missions (and remember, these can't just be in their own political geography for proper coverage) to be able to communicate with interplanetary vehicles, it'll expose them (no way to hide who did it), and there's nothing to gain economically or scientifically considering that these rovers, probes, etc have instruments from collaboration with multiple countries. It'll just be an unnecessary political fallout with no gain for anyone. So while some countries have DSNs, it's not on the same level as NASAs, and even if they were, interfering with a NASA mission would expose you and gain you nothing.

Basically as a result for now it's a non-issue due to how the infrastructure works and the requirement for very specialised, large, expensive equipment to communicate that far. Even if a country managed to build a DSN that was able to communicate, it'll expose them and have a huge political issue and it would all be for nothing because space exploration is a very international collaborative effort, research and data is shared, instruments are made by multiple countries, etc. There is only one country I think in the world that would do it just to piss everyone off and that's North Korea but North Korea's not building a DSN any time soon. The international scientific community surrounding space exploration in any form is very collaborative so there's no incentive really for any country to be malicious.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
We are so close. 9 and a half years, 3.26 billion miles. Holy moley. Tomorrow is the big day!!

Yeah, but don't expect too many pictures until the end of the week, and even then pictures will be slowly trickling in over the next several weeks due to data packet limitations. Still, we should be in for some awesome revelations within a few days!
 
Things like this really help you appreciate both the vastness of space and how insane it is that humans have achieved anything at all in space.
The team in the MOC knew that one possibility, very remote, was that the spacecraft had hit something. It’s going so fast that it could be disabled by a collision with something as small as a grain of rice. But there’s no rice near Pluto and, although there are dust particles, rocks, boulders and a few moons, space is really spacious in three dimensions. The odds of New Horizons hitting anything during this journey — especially while still millions of miles from the Pluto system — are extremely low.
 
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