Is Pluto’s atmosphere thick enough that a probe could aerobrake into orbit?
Bump!
In order to find out more about 2014 MU69, NASA used Hubble data to predict the occultation of a very faint star by MU69 that would only be visible from a remote location in Argentina.
The observation makes for a rather charming story.
“We had to go up to farmers’ doors and say ‘Hi, we’re here from NASA, we’re wondering if we can set up telescopes in your back pasture?’” Parker says. “More often than not people were like ‘that sounds awesome, sure, we’ll help out!’”
They appear to have captured some significant data. Though, I’d have to say that if you can predict that the starlight shadow of an object 6.5 billion km away will pass over a specific part of Argentina and then have that turn out to be correct, you’ve obviously already got a pretty good handle on its orbital position.
That’s quite a story. Whole communities turned our their lights and stopped traffic in order to help.
Maybe I’m being cynical, but imagine trying to do that in the U.S. People would be complaining about an overbearing government, and outsiders would probably show up and shine lights just to be assholes.
Yet in Argentina they cooperated with a foreign government.
Be sure to let us know when the probe gets there.
They might have been confident of the occultation path but not the to-the-second timing. Direct observation always helps narrow the error bars.
P.S. the angular diameter of the background star must be astonishingly tiny indeed if a minor body billions of miles away will completely occlude it.
Where, Uranus?
Regards,
Shodan
This thread is the greatest of all time! In years to come alien space probes will read these pages and send the data back to their base. Live long and prosper.
Because its not the government and politics. Its science.
One vowel makes a difference.
“We’re from NASA and we’d like to use your property for a while to make some observations.”
Why sure, stranger, let me know how I can help.
“We’re from NSA and we’d like to use your property for a while to make some observations.”
Run shrieking into the night!
Yes, but in the US everything is politics these days; science, food, religion, music, holiday greetings… everything.
Hey, if I can wait nine years for it to get to Pluto, he should have no trouble waiting a few years for it to get to 2014 MU69.
Which really ought be officially named since it’s going to be much better documented than many other Kuiper objects.
Here I was thinking, “Didn’t we already have a probe at Pluto? I mean, they discovered moons and everything…”
Couldn’t resist dragging this one up out of the dust. How’s life for you these days? 