Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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With pre-launch press conferences scheduled for January 15th (see web site via image above) and a launch window opening January 17th, 2006, the "last planet*" in our system and the "planetoids" beyond it in the Kuiper Belt are due for a robotic visit. This long delayed "New Horizons" mission has been bumped back a few times, and almost cancelled at least once, but looks set to ride it's candle into the cold within the next two weeks. The Mecury (Messenger) probe is already en route, and the ESA's Venus Express probe is about 3.5 months from arrival in the hot zone (both with Official Threads™ pending), so all that remains of the major spheres are the outer orbiting ice/rock balls. Pluto and Charon, including the 2 new moons of Pluto recently discovered by Hubble <-- click for Realvideo link to full Jan 3/2006 press conference > (associated PDF files from the presentation are here and here), and possibly swings past Quoar and/or Sedna, plus other 'candidate planetoids'... though you'll have to be patient for updates and groovy photos in this thread... won't get to Pluto until 2015... the mid Kuiper Belt by 2020. Although with NASA putting stickers on their rides, they may be hoping to make them go faster. * Disputes continue over what qualifies for 'planet' versus 'planetoid' versus 'moon'. Linkage available if desired. |
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Wonder if they'll find any asteroids or if Aldo will be available in 2015.
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Five hours until launch window opens.
Launch Date: January 17, 2006 Launch Time: 1:24:00 p.m. EST See also the Virtual Launch Control Center NASA TV also has live coverage planned (all times in EST) January 17, Tuesday 11 a.m. - Pluto / New Horizons Launch Commentary Begins (Launch 1:24 p.m.) - KSC (Mission Coverage) There will be a few nervous nellies leftover from the three dozen protestors last week (worried about the plutonium in the RTG power system), but the risk is small and the advantages are large, particularly given the wimpiness of solar generating power once you get to Pluto. Fingers crossed all goes smoothly. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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T minus 1 hour and counting...
Minor worry that the winds may increase over the limiting condition for launch today (currently 35mph), but so far so good. |
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Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
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Just saw a news spot on local TV news about this.
They said it was going to be the fastest space probe ever. |
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Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
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Grrr...
Now it got postponed, due to wind in the launch area. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Same time tomorrow... launch window now Jan 18th, 1:16 pm to 3:15pm EST.
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto is proceeding toward launch on Jan. 19. The launch opportunity runs from 1:08 p.m. - 3:07 p.m. EST.
Countdown resumed... 44 min to go, and counting. All systems look good. Weather is good. NASA TV has live coverage now. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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T - minus 3 minutes and 30 seconds and counting.
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Launch!
Everything looking good. SRB sep on time. Should pass the moon in 9 hours. |
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feeling my oats
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9 hours?? how long did it take the apollo flights to get to the moon?
how many G's is that thing pulling right now? guess we couldn't have a human on it or they would likely squish down to hobbit size g crazy is not a rare human condition everything is food if you chew hard enough |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Third stage ignition and successful burn!
On its way smoothly. IIRC, Apollo took 2.5ish days to get to the moon. This is the fastest spacecraft launch in history. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Click here for launch videos Real and WMV links halfway down on the right The top link on the right has video replay of the post-launch press briefing. |
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owner for sale by house
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Nasa needs to work on their website, their live coverage sucked. You had to MANUALLY reload the page, and they were several minutes behind. They should get the MacRumours guys in to set them up with a decent system ...
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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That's what NASA TV is for... their live coverage was fine.
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owner for sale by house
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Maybe so, but my browser died when I clicked the link for that. Also, you can follow a page with some text without giving it all your attention. And I was just surprised that they didn't even do an automatic refresh of the page, that's all ...
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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I have a few of the old RealPlayer stream locations saved in RP, so I just reload various servers until I find a good one.
#pnm://media.chron.com/live/nasa/nasatv.live.rm rtsp://media.chron.com/redundant/nasa/nasatv.live.rm - 100Kbps R10 from Houston Cronicle rtsp://vanseg-3.arc.nasa.gov/encoder/nasa_tv.rm - 100Kbps R10 stream plus the regular link from the NASA TV page, which is usually a 150Kbps R9 stream I used to have a few 300Kbps links, but NASA TV went digital last year and the links got updated |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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http://news.discovery.com/space/plut...on-hubble.html
Is it just me, or is the view at 180 ripe for ZOMG ITS A FACE insanity? |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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New Horizons spacecraft is more than halfway to Pluto, so better pictures are pending, but still a few years away.
All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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New Horizons detects surface features on Pluto and Charon... and possible Polar Cap
More images from the latest press conference. The image above shows some of the latest LORRI pics... in accurate Barycentric Orbit*... and despite it being colder than a Witch's Teat at approx -370 F, the inserts at lower right appear to show highlights consistent with Polar "Ice" Cap * Pluto and Charon mutually orbit a Barycentric point indicated by the wee bluish-green + symbol in the captioned graphic at left More details can be found at the Official Project Page Or the NASA's New Horizons Mission Page And the countdown to July 15, 2015 closest encounter continues... All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. Last edited by curiousuburb : 2015-05-07 at 04:32. |
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Astro-Burb strikes again! Great update.
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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4 days until Plutopalooza... <--click for Toolkit: downloads, vids, PDFs, etc
The Wait is almost over ... Well... after that extra bit of anxiety as an anomaly kicked the spacecraft into safe mode and onto it's B side redundant computer on July 4th... NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.July 9th Press Briefing (15:31 min) Latest LORRI pics show Pluto has heart The "unrolled" map for those who want to texture their own 3D version is here Latest shots of Pluto and Charon It's all getting so very exciting!!¡ Those of us old enough to remember Voyager may recall the frisson, that anticipatory thrill of discovery as those spacecraft enabled us to explore the outer planets in our solar neighbourhood for the very first time. Having absorbed the initial Jupiter flyby, with all of the amazing pictures of the Great Red Spot and the Gallilean Moons, I remember eagerly awaiting the following encounters with Saturn, then years later with Uranus, and then Neptune. Pluto's demotion to Dwarf Planet status notwithstanding*, this feels like the long deferred completion of the full Solar System set. Considering Ceres was once considered a Planet as well, and this year we've had close up pics of that, too, I'd say we could call a few variations of the Classic Solar System ticked as Been Visited. Go New Horizons Go! All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. Last edited by curiousuburb : 2015-07-10 at 05:02. Reason: Spellling, layout, link fixing, etc. ;) |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this too! I was someone posted an article about it a few days ago that we were one day away from the flyby. Then they went on to say it was one Pluto day.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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6 Hours to closest approach...
Although there's a 4 and a half hour light delay to Pluto, we won't get live updates... in fact, it'll be more than 12 hours until the first telemetry confirms we even survived passage through the orbital plane (at 30K mph/49K kph impact with even a pebble the size of a grain of rice could mean loss of spacecraft... NASA estimated the odds at about 1 in 10 000... fingers crossed). To save mass and complexity, the sensor packages aren't on moving arms or platform... the whole spacecraft has to turn to point them, so it can't collect and send data at the same time. Most of the flyby is spent with various instruments rotating pointing at Pluto or Charon (a wee bit at Nix, Hydra, etc). IIRC, the only times the main antenna is pointing at Earth during closest approach are actually when it is receiving signals from the Deep Space Network to calibrate the REX experiments, measuring the atmospheric composition and density of Pluto and/or Charon. Closest approach is 7:49AM EDT We won't start getting data back until many hours after closest approach... in fact, there will be sooo much data, some instruments will only send brief headlines/synopses... the full data download may take weeks. Telemetry download approximately 9PM EDT NASA TV has press conference scheduled about 9:15PM to confirm high-fiving scientists (fingers crossed) Close-up images and comprehensive data to be released starting tomorrow For more details on the schedule of activities, see http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Flyby.php Follow the path of the spacecraft in coming days in real time with a visualization of the actual trajectory data, using NASA’s online Eyes on Pluto. (<-Sadly only available for Mac or PC, not mobile devices) All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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New Horizons is officially worse than Australian internet.
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Firstly, a correction...
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New Horizons is now more than a Million miles beyond Pluto. They captured sooo much data during closest approach that full data download will take 16 months Quote:
All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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More awesomeness later with the next press briefing and image dump...
but here's a cool animation of our best views of Pluto through the years: This animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (image courtesy Lowell Observatory Archives). The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto released on July 15, 2015.Can't wait to see what's next. All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. Last edited by curiousuburb : 2015-07-16 at 11:59. |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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