# Pluto Probe on it's way **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 19, 2006, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695 "2006-01-19T19:08:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/81 "2015-07-14T17:16:35Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > I’ll be honest; I didn’t even think Pluto was a sphere. The blurry images I saw as a kid made me think it was just a rock at the edge of the solar system. These latest pictures are fascinating. Ditto. I was expecting just a big-ass asteroid. This is way cool. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/82 "2015-07-14T17:21:07Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > [George Takei nails it.](https://www.facebook.com/georgehtakei/photos/a.737221629640626.1073741825.205344452828349/1308548119174638/?type=1) Well, debate over. I guess it’s one of those things where first you don’t see it, and then you can’t un-see it. > [@eschereal](#): > > Even karen is big enough to round out. My friend Karen is taking offense at that remark. Oh, you’re talking about Charon. Actually, it does apply to my friend Karen as well. Just don’t say it to her face. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/83 "2015-07-14T17:36:13Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > My friend Karen is taking offense at that remark. > > Oh, you’re talking about Charon. > > Actually, it does apply to my friend Karen as well. Just don’t say it to her face. Then why did you tell her? Obviously you need to keep her around, to help you deal with the mysteries of that washing machine. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/84 "2015-07-14T20:15:19Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Well, debate over. I guess it’s one of those things where first you don’t see it, and then you can’t un-see it. . . No kidding. I didn’t think Disney had _that_ much clout. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/85 "2015-07-14T20:29:36Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Ditto. I was expecting just a big-ass asteroid. This is way cool. I’m surprised this opinion is so common. Even without high quality photographic evidence, we’ve had enough information about the mass of Pluto to know that it must be spherical, regardless of its composition. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/86 "2015-07-14T21:08:38Z")
Obligatory XKCD [link](http://xkcd.com/1551/). I don’t see those weird “plumes” at the upper right in the big picture posted earlier. What If? has restarted with a relevant (?) [column](http://what-if.xkcd.com/137/). ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2015, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/87 "2015-07-14T22:09:42Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > I’m surprised this opinion is so common. Even without high quality photographic evidence, we’ve had enough information about the mass of Pluto to know that it must be spherical, regardless of its composition. Scientifically I have to agree, but as a 12 year old kid looking at a blurry white dot some 2.66 billion miles away (at its closest location to Earth) we had no idea what it really looked like. I haven’t bothered to Google Pluto and read up on it since. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my personal banking. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/88 "2015-07-15T00:02:03Z")
Planetary Society livestream now [Articles | The Planetary Society](http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/pluto/exploring-pluto.html) Emily L’s twitter: [https://twitter.com/elakdawalla](https://twitter.com/elakdawalla) More links from her: [What to expect when you're expecting a flyby:… | The Planetary Society](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06240556-what-to-expect-new-horizons-pluto.html) Brian ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/89 "2015-07-15T00:08:40Z")
I’m old but ever since I was a kid, I always considered Pluto to be pretty much the “Outer Limits” of the Solar System. I am very pleased that in my lifetime, we finally “explored” it. Well, that’s one “boundary” down 🙂 - and an incredible achievement!!! Just to give you an idea of the incredible distances of space (and somebody please check these calculations), if we drew the Earth as a 5 inch sphere, where would we place the model of Pluto? **36 miles** away. And where (on this scale) would we place the model of Alpha Centauri? _ **The Moon!!!** _ Yes, folks we still have a _ **long** _ way to go. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/90 "2015-07-15T00:14:16Z")
This tweet might be of some interest. > ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/91 "2015-07-15T00:28:27Z")
It has been amazing; in my lifetime, Pluto may have gone from a planet to a “dwarf planet”, but it has also gone from being a series of numbers on a table (Table 1. Planets of the Solar System: Distance from the Sun…) to [a tantalizingly fuzzy _world_](http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/solar%20system/pluto/2010/06/image/a/format/web_print/), and now, with amazing speed, it’s gone from a blurry orange blob to… [This!](http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/tn-p_lorri_fullframe_color.png) (And more to come soon, we all hope.) A lot of the commentary seems to be of the effect that this is “the last frontier” or “the last world to be explored”. But, judging by [this chart](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/content/What-We-Know/images/WhatWeKnow-KuiperBelt-SizesandColors.jpg) from the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins (who are running the New Horizons mission), it looks to me like there are a _lot_ of strange new worlds still out there. Not just that “Oh, we haven’t been to that particular iceball yet”–to my semi-informed layman’s eye, _no two of those worlds look alike_. So, maybe someday, we’ll be sending probes to Quaoar, and Sedna, and Haumea, and Makemake\*, and Eris, and Orcus and Ixion and Varuna\*\*. It does _not_ seem like “Oh, outer system dwarf planets–you see one, you’ve seen them all”. \*Although it still sounds to me like something you’d order at a sushi place, it certainly seems to be excitingly colored. \*\*I presume those worlds aren’t actually just dull, bright white; but that they’re being represented that way because _we still don’t know anything about them yet._ ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/92 "2015-07-15T00:41:39Z")
I love that this mission seems to have an official song - the theme to Star Trek: Enterprise. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/93 "2015-07-15T00:57:57Z")
All systems report **NOMINAL**! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![2gigch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/2gigch1/32/3313_2.png) [@2gigch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2gigch1)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/94 "2015-07-15T00:59:09Z")
That was fun to watch on NASA TV. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/95 "2015-07-15T01:06:52Z")
Way cool to hear system after system report nominal (from Emily’s tweets) SSR POINTERS ARE WHERE WE EXPECT THEM TO BE WHICH MEANS WE RECORDED SPECTRA GNC IS NOMINAL ALL HARDWARE IS HEALTHY AND WE HAVE A GOOD NUMBER OF THRUSTER COUNTS PROPULSION IS NOMINAL PRESSURE IS 176.8 POWER SYSTEM IS NOMINAL HARDWARE IS HEALTHY THERMAL REPORTS NOMINAL AL TEMPERATURES GREEN PI: MOM ON PLUTO-1 WE HAVE A HEALTHY SPACECRAFT WE RECORDED DATA ON THE PLUTO SYSTEM AND WE ARE OUTBOUND FROM PLUTO Brian ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/96 "2015-07-15T01:16:02Z")
> [@](#): > > WE HAVE A HEALTHY SPACECRAFT WE RECORDED DATA ON THE PLUTO SYSTEM AND WE ARE OUTBOUND FROM PLUTO I got a bit emotional when the mission controller said that. Well done everyone, well done. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/97 "2015-07-15T01:21:42Z")
A weird passing thought: When I was a little boy, I had this gizmo called a [“Big Trak”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak). It was a robot tank (with a “ray gun” cannon that would flash and make a sound effect). The (theoretically) really cool thing was that you could program it: Go forward _z_ lengths, turn _y_ degrees to starboard, and fire the cannon _z_ times! _PEW PEW PEW!_ And by properly programming it, you could send it out, and down the hallway say, to ambush some green plastic army men or something. The thing is, to the best of my recollection it _never_ really worked properly. The carpet would mess it up or something; but it would never actually go foward at just the right length and wheel around to just the correct position and actually zap the target with its little flashlight ray gun. So, to send a space probe across billions of miles of space, and expect it to correctly and precisely position itself to take photographs and sensor measurements of some alien world it’s whizzing past at tens of thousands of miles an hour is just absolutely amazing. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/98 "2015-07-15T01:51:30Z")
ah, so M O M stands for Mission Operations Manager… :smack: I actually thought it was kinda cool that each section was reporting to “Mom”. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/99 "2015-07-15T02:25:25Z")
There are also oceans to explore inside Europa, Ceres, Ganymede, Callisto and _Terra_. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2015, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695/100 "2015-07-15T02:28:33Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > It clearly a clover shape if we were able to see it from the right perspective, and this is proof that aliens are Leprechauns. Or simply drunk? 😉 > [@MEBuckner](#): > > So, to send a space probe across billions of miles of space, and expect it to correctly and precisely position itself to take photographs and sensor measurements of some alien world it’s whizzing past at tens of thousands of miles an hour is just absolutely amazing. I guess that’s my core reaction as well. There are still times when the human animal amazes me and gives me some hope for the future. By Friday my mileage may be greatly reduced. Who knows? But I hope to ride this buzz for as long as I can. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-probe-on-its-way/340695.md?page=6)