Pluto Probe on it's way

The history on this board is really incredible. I wonder on what other board would a thread be started in 2006, with a promise to revive it in 9 years, and actually have it happen?

I meant to mention this back in 2006, but I got busy. Better late than never.

Its, NOT it’s.

“This image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon,”

Wow! Even in that tiny image its really damn clear! Heck of a great camera on that probe - especially when you consider how dated the technology is. ( :slight_smile: on that technology part)

I’m still looking to make book on the probe spotting a tether linking Pluto and Charon. :stuck_out_tongue:

I wager 500 quatloos against there being a tether. :slight_smile:

Ah, zombie nitpicks are the best.

Yeah, waiting over 9 years to pick it is super satisfying! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Obligatory xkcd

Getting even closer. Can finally make out something other than just a blurry disc.

Holy crap, I barely even remember writing that.

I was reading the paper about the probe yesterday and that the primary computer conked out last week and telemetry suddenly stopped, sending controllers into a panic. Due to the incredible distance it had happened 4.5 hours previously, as it took that long for the signal to arrive. They changed frequency to the back-up, sent another signal and 9 hours later got word they were back in business, only days before their very brief, one time flyby. For reference it takes about a second for signals to travel back and forth to the moon. That Pluto probe is out there.

4.5 hours each way? Unacceptable; they should have rigged it to use the subspace frequencies.
Amateurs.

Headed to the press conference now will update.

NASA - NEW HORIZONS - PLUTO - NASA is inviting media to cover the New Horizons spacecraft’s closest approach and July 14 Pluto flyby from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, site of the mission operations center.

So NASA spent a billion dollars to fly over Disneyland and take pictures of a cartoon dog – another damn liberal waste of money!

Truly Goofy.

Why would it be beige? It just seems like such an odd color for a remote and mysterious world.

Many of us are probably looking forward to a wealth of exciting imagery as it makes its flyby, and hopefully we’ll see some interesting stuff fairly soon, but alas, it looks like patience will be the order of the day. It turns out that Pluto has really lousy Internet service (and you wouldn’t believe the monthly fees!). I believe the downlink from New Horizons at that range is a mere 1 Kbit/s.

Hi-res images, especially with color information, are going to take a while, not to mention all the other scientific data. I think I read somewhere that the thing is going to be interrogated for something like 16 months afterwards, as it flies off to hopefully rendezvous with a further Kuiper belt object – with the Internet service getting crappier than ever.

I hate when they fund these mickey mouse bullshit projects.

so… this thread isn’t so much a zombie as a time capsule that we just opened? A message from the past to the [del]future[/del] now.

Well, apparently, the universe is beige, on average. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Latest photo of the surface.