New Horizons should have been sending us data at full speed for the last approximately 11 days now, having reappeared from behind the sun in our view. We got a coarse pretty picture in the big rush after the flyby, and then a few things that appear to have been built out of earlier images such as rotating views. But no higher resolution image in the last 11 days. Why?
Yes, they are prioritizing image metadata, so they better understand what order to download the images they get. I read that late February should deliver us more good stuff.
But still, I’m surprised we didn’t get one piece of eye candy early on.
Say, just one other little curiosity – is there anything at all of interest for New Horizons to see about Ultima Thule in the days after flyby? It’d be backlit, and getting very small in the rear view mirror (so to speak), but there might be something they’d check for, such as light scattering from things orbiting around Ultima Thule. Just wondering.
First, the New Horizons mission doesn’t have a 100% open-data, instant-sharing policy. The team investigators get a first crack at looking at and analyzing any data, so there is in effect a brief embargo before images are shared with the public. I believe this is in contrast to some other missions, where data is automatically uploaded to public servers.
Second, the government shutdown is slowing down any non-essential parts of the mission. All the team members involved with operating the spacecraft, directing science, and receiving data are essential I believe. Some of the basic science roles might not be, which could slow down the process of reviewing data before releasing it to the public. And any public relations roles are also probably non-essential, which means there’s nobody to do the press releases and press conferences associated with showing off new images.
The bitrate is even lower than it was at Pluto. Something like 500 bit/sec. And high-rez images have lots and lots of bits. It will take hours to download a single image. But first they have to figure out which are likely to be the best images, so they don’t waste time on the wrong ones. To do that, they have to download the metadata and analyze it.
Alan Stern tweeted a while back that there would be a new data release ‘in about 10 days’. Ten days would be tomorrow. So maybe we will see something then.
