New Horizons Pluto flyby (1 Viewer)

JuveJay

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Mar 6, 2007
72,069
#1
Latest image:



A signal received from the New Horizons spacecraft shows that it survived its historic encounter with Pluto.

Data in its first call home since Tuesday's flyby suggest the spacecraft experienced no upsets as it hurtled past the icy world at 14km/s (31,000mph).

The signal came through a giant dish in Madrid, Spain - part of a Nasa network of communications antennas.

The message took four hours 25 minutes to traverse 4.7 billion km of space.

The tension mounted as scientists and engineers at mission headquarters in Laurel, Maryland, waited for telemetry information. So there was joy and relief when the signal was received at 01:52 BST; team members cheered, hugged each other and waved American flags.

"We are in lock with telemetry from the spacecraft," said mission operations manager Alice Bowman as confirmation was received.

"We have a healthy spacecraft, we have recorded data from the Pluto system, and we are outbound from Pluto."

A few minutes later, she added: "I can't express how I feel. It's just like we planned it!"


The message took four hours 25 minutes to traverse 4.7 billion km of space.
Aww, it has a sort of heart-shaped plain or basin.

It's also bigger than previously thought, and red like Mars.
 

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Ali

Conditioned
Contributor
Jul 15, 2002
19,052
#7
To travel at 14km/s & cover 4.7 billion kilometres successfully is just mindboggling not to mention it's in space! Congrats to all involved. I can't wait for all the data & pics to trickle in.
 
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JuveJay

JuveJay

Senior Signor
Moderator
Mar 6, 2007
72,069
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread Starter #12
    $700m. So about 0.03% of a typical NASA annual budget, or 0.0004% of the US GDP.

    Or around 35 million blunts.
     

    swag

    L'autista
    Administrator
    Sep 23, 2003
    83,365
    #16
    Some people want us to be a subsistence society that never aspires to learn anything about the world or universe. Things like researching materials, matter, geology, physics ... All of that is a waste of money. We should all be still wearing animal skins, living in caves, and flinging dung at each other on a much greater scale with that money.
     

    Fint

    Senior Member
    Aug 13, 2010
    19,354
    #17
    Some people want us to be a subsistence society that never aspires to learn anything about the world or universe. Things like researching materials, matter, geology, physics ... All of that is a waste of money. We should all be still wearing animal skins, living in caves, and flinging dung at each other on a much greater scale with that money.
    :agree:

    Top marks Gregory
     

    swag

    L'autista
    Administrator
    Sep 23, 2003
    83,365
    #18
    It's admittedly pretty amazing how things like the Internet, earthquake building codes, solar energy, automobiles, advanced health care all mysteriously appeared with no scientific investments.

    Looks like Tom Cruise was right about Xenu landing on earth in a DC-8 and giving us all that stuff.
     

    swag

    L'autista
    Administrator
    Sep 23, 2003
    83,365
    #20
    I just hope New Horizons discovers how we can harvest the Kuiper Belt to deliver water to California from space.
     

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