NASA's Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Has Awakened

[pedro47]

Richard, are we along in this huge universe?

 

[Panina]

Richard, are we along in this huge universe?

I personally feel we are not alone. The universes size is really unknown, where did it come from? Out of nothing? From something? Theories exist but that is what they are theories not proven fact. Somewhere the probability is there is life out there, like us? different?

I always joke is Earth a lab experiment? We really don’t know as much as we think we do.

 

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Way Beyond Pluto, an Icy World Is Ready For Its Close-Up
By Nell Greenfieldboyce/ Space/ Heard on Morning Edition/ National Public Radio (NPR)/ npr.org

"About a billion miles beyond Pluto, a spacecraft is closing in on an icy minor planet — a mysterious little place that's only about 20 miles across.

If all goes well, NASA will start the new year with the most far-off exploration of a world ever, flying past it about 2,200 miles from the surface while taking images with an onboard telescope and camera. The closest approach will be at 12:33 a.m. ET on Jan 1.

"Really, we have no idea what to expect," Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, said during a recent news conference....."

An artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountering Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object that orbits 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, on Jan. 1, 2019.

JPL/NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben



Richard

 

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NASA's New Horizon Spacecraft Is Triumphant In Encounter With the Most Distant Object Ever Visited
By Kenneth Chang/ Science/ The New York Times/ nytimes.com

"Now scientists await clearer pictures and a bounty of new data about a small, mysterious icy body four billion miles from Earth.

LAUREL, Md. — Thirty-three minutes into the new year, scientists, engineers and well-wishers here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory celebrated the moment that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to a small, icy world nicknamed Ultima Thule.

Almost 10 hours later, the New Horizons team finally received confirmation that the spacecraft had executed its planned observations flawlessly. In the days and months to come, the mission’s scientists expect to receive pictures of Ultima Thule and scientific data that could lead to discoveries about the origins of the sun and the planets.

That is the latest triumph in a journey that started in 2006, when the spacecraft launched on a mission to explore Pluto. Thirteen years and more than four billion miles later, New Horizons has provided humanity’s first glimpse of a distant fragment that could be unchanged from the solar system’s earliest days.

Ultima Thule, the name that the mission team selected for the object from more than 34,000 suggestions from the public, means “beyond the borders of the known world.” (Thule is pronounced “TOO-lee.”)

During the flyby, at a distance of about 2,200 miles, the spacecraft was out of communication with Earth because it was busy making scientific observations. Only hours later did New Horizons turn its antenna toward home. Then, it sent a 15-minute update, confirming it had survived the flyby. The message took six hours to travel the 4.1 billion miles at the speed of light to Earth. Future transmissions are expected to convey new pictures and readings from the flyby.

At 10:31 a.m., the operations center at Johns Hopkins, which runs the mission for NASA, confirmed that a radio dish in Madrid, part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, had locked in to the signal from New Horizons.

“We have a healthy spacecraft,” Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager, announced following a methodical check of the spacecraft’s systems. “We’ve just accomplished the most distant flyby.”......"

S. Alan Stern, center, New Horizons’ principal investigator, surrounded by children at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., on Tuesday.CreditCreditMatt Roth for The New York Times




Richard

 

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New Horizon's Images Reveal Ultima Thule's Odd 'Snowman Shape'
By Jay Passachoff/ Science/ Space/ Mach/ NBC News/ nbcnews.com

"Only this snowman is about 21 miles high and made of icy rubble.

NASA's far-flung New Horizons spacecraft has revealed for the first time a clear picture of Ultima Thule, the icy object it flew by shortly after midnight on New Year's Day.

The city-size object is made up of a pair of roughly spherical lobes, mission scientists said at a press conference Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, to discuss the new findings.

The scientists dubbed the larger lobe "Ultima," the smaller one "Thule."

"The bowling pin is gone," Alan Stern, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and the mission's principal investigator, said, referring to the shape scientists had preliminarily ascribed to the object. "It’s a snowman if it’s anything at all."

The images were obtained by cameras aboard the spacecraft as it sped by the "bi-lobed" object, which orbits the sun about 1 billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. At that distance, it takes radio signals more than six hours to travel back to Earth.

Stern said only about 1 percent of the data collected by the spacecraft had been beamed back to Earth. In coming days, the scientists will be getting images with greater detail.

The best image revealed Wednesday has a resolution of about 130 yards per pixel, for a total of 2,800 pixels in the image. In the next few days, we'll see images with resolutions four times finer with a full megapixel of data in the image.

This image from video made available by NASA on Jan. 2, 2019 shows the size and shape of the object Ultima Thule, about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto.NASA via AP



Richard

 

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New Horizos' Big Reveal On MU69: Ultima Thule Is a Typical 'Future Comet'
By Ethan Siegel/ Science/ Forbes/ forbes.com

"As 2018 ended and 2019 began, NASA's New Horizons flew past its first target after Pluto: 2014 MU69.

Nicknamed Ultima Thule, it's transformed from a single pixel in our detectors to a red-hued, mottled snowman.

The first three weeks of data have revealed spectacular details concerning this distant world.


Aside from its inactivity, it conforms perfectly to our expectations of cometary nuclei.

In 1986, Halley's comet was imaged by the ESA's Giotto mission, revealing a two-lobed core......"

This view of Comet Halley's nucleus was obtained by the Halley Multicolour Camera (HMC) on board the Giotto spacecraft, as it passed within 600 km of the comet nucleus on 13 March 1986. The comet was clearly quite active at the time.ESA/MPAE LINDAU


Richard

 

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Distant Ultima Thule Looks Amazing in Best New Horizons Photo Yet
By Meghan Bartels/ Space.com/ Science & Astronomy/ space.com

"NASA's New Horizons mission has shared its most detailed view yet of the Kuiper Belt object, nicknamed Ultima Thule, that the spacecraft flew past on Jan. 1. It's become nearly impossible to remember that just a few weeks ago the object was a fuzzy blur.

The image was taken when the spacecraft was about 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) away from Ultima Thule, about 7 minutes before the probe made its closest approach to the object. Between the close proximity of the object and the angle of the light hitting it, the image is already helping scientists better understand the distant object.

"This new image is starting to reveal differences in the geologic character of the two lobes of Ultima Thule and is presenting us with new mysteries as well," Alan Stern, principal investigator for the mission, said in a statement. "Over the next month, there will be better color and better-resolution images that we hope will help unravel the many mysteries of Ultima Thule."......"

The New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule, snapping the picture from about 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) away on Jan. 1.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute


Richard

 

[Talent312]

I find it just amazing that we-humans have managed to create a device that can send us photos from four billion miles away after 13 years in space... Meanwhile, I had to jump start my car in my own garage this week.

 

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New Horizons Final Ultima Thule Images Reveal True Shape
By Ewdison Then/ Slash Gear/ slashgear.com

"Given the vastness of outer space, it’s no surprise we know very little about it. Most of the time, we can only make guesses based on images our terrestrial telescopes and a few orbital satellites have captured of celestial objects few spacecraft have reached. It wasn’t until New Horizons made its historic flyby of Pluto that we finally got our up-close look at the demoted planet. Now New Horizons is bidding farewell to another long-distance neighbor, but not before throwing scientists new puzzles to munch on about the odd Ultima Thule.

Ultima Thule, more formally named 2014 MU69, is Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), is so far the most distant world ever explored in our solar system. Or perhaps it’s better to say “worlds”. Ultima Thule is actually composed of two joined shapes, named “Ultima” and “Thule”, that were first thought to be both spherical, earning the nickname “snowman”. But like with anything in space, nothing is what it seems.

It’s not that easy to get accurate photos of the complete form of Ultima Thule, considering factors like distance from the sun, the side facing the light, and New Horizon’s 50,000 km/h speed. Add the fact that the spacecraft used long exposure times to boost the camera’s signal level, and you’ve got some heavy blurring going on. Thanks to some processing and tracking which stars are being blocked by Ultima Thule’s shape, scientists at NASA were able to get a better estimate of the KBO’s body....."

Richard

 

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:
Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission.


https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-voyager-mission/


Richard