NEW HORIZONS to visit Pluto July 14

Fake?!?!?!...

I don't know, but as the great Professeur Avogadro, Visionary and Keeper of Secrets said,


"6.02 x 10^23 Conspiracy Theories complete with "real" "photographic" evidence cannot be wrong...!"


It must have been so cool to have actually been there as Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg!

Lucky Kid!

 

XKCD has a very silly but very cool one about the exploration of the solar system, including Pluto, Ceres and the comet:

https://www.xkcd.com/1547/

And beyond the silliness lies what we have yet to explore.

 

Here is a post on a Pluto Orbiter concept from SAIC years ago
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2778/1

I wonder if the JIMO concept would also work as a nuclear DAWN.

--another look
SOFIA http://www.americaspace.com/?p=83853

 

Well the New Horizons probe has completed it's closest apprach to Pluto, unfortunatly we'll have to wait hours to see any data.

 

^ The NYT says 9pm tonight.

The images have been astounding!

 

I believe the actual scheduled time for the call home is 00:53GMT tomorrow. You can adjust for your own timezone.

 

What an incredible success! Congrats to all concerned. Can't wait to see all the pics and data! Well done!

 

Assuming the probe survived the fly-by, it re-orients itself to transmit the data back to Earth, it was pointed in the right direction and a whole host of other things that might have gone wrong. Not saying anything has gone wrong, But I would wait to toast the success until we actually get data back.

 

About 8PM CST tonight NASA should get a message from New Horizons. But nothing until then.

 

http://m.space.com/29929-pluto-flyby-new-horizons-spacecraft.html

The space craft was traveling upwards at 30,000 mph, so fast that if it came into contact with a piece of debris the size of a grain of rice the result would have been fatal.

So traveling faster and faster creates more dangers associated with occupying more space at any one time where small debris would be the primary concern.

 

It made it fine and phoned home. We'll start getting some nice pics tomorrow. I can't wait.

 

Nope, the chances of hitting something don't increase with speed, but if you do hit something it will have more kinetic force.

 

Awwwww.

 

Makes you wonder if the shape of the heart that we know from playing cards was not discovered earlier in time before telescopes existed due to meditation. Maybe a passing by UFO took the image and dropped it off for humans and instructed us what it meant.

 

This depresses me so much!

No. None of these things. No.

 

OMG I love it.

 

No, it really doesn't make us wonder that. At all.

I don't see the Gamilon base.

 

How deep is the debate hole and is it heated?