New Horizons at Pluto

I must admit, the Pluto system is turning out to be more interesting than I'd expected.
I mean, I'm still expecting a geologically dead world with impact craters and varying albedos that will need analyses to explain them, but Pluto isn't as featureless as I'd figured it would be.
 
Even at the current distance, the pictures are freaky cool even without Deep Dreaming them.

Tomorrow...
 
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Foster Zygote said:
It was either that, or wait until we're all long, long dead to go into orbit around the Pluto barycenter.
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It's also probably more useful. A flyby gives us the chance to explore the Ort Cloud more than an orbit would.

Still, I agree that I'm a bit sad that we won't be spending much time in the area.
 
Dinwar said:
It's also probably more useful. A flyby gives us the chance to explore the Ort Cloud more than an orbit would.

Still, I agree that I'm a bit sad that we won't be spending much time in the area.
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Oh, me too. But it's like seeing boobies when you're a kid: better a quick glimpse on late-night cable than nothing at all.
 
Very Excited.
I remember the Voyager probes, when they were visiting the gas giants etc. and even did an essay on them. They were a real technical acheivement for their time. But it was always a bit sad that they couldn't visit Pluto.

Then in recent years, when we were getting ready for our first born, we got a rug to go in her bedroom with all the planets on. It included Pluto, even though it had been desgnated a dwarf planet by then (B&Q don't really follow astronomy clearly).

Now she's 4, we play a game which is sort of combination of the Adventure Game's Vortex (Brits of a certain age will remember this), and Mornington Cresecent. Bascially we jump on each planet and try to catch each other out.

But the great thing is that she's pointing at them and saying "planet!". She probably doesn't quite get what that means, but its progress.

All this just before we finally see Pluto up close, I can't help but feel a bit of irony, and yet delight.
 
All that planet/dwarf planet stuff is so weird. It drew in people who felt passionately about it, and I noticed that some never seemed to give a crap about astronomy until Pluto's status became an issue.
Even from my youngest days of interest, I could tell it was going to be debated hotly. I can recall that by the time I was ten, 1980, I'd decided it didn't have enough in common with the rest to be called a planet.
 
Foster Zygote said:
Oh, me too. But it's like seeing boobies when you're a kid: better a quick glimpse on late-night cable than nothing at all.
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My dad introduced us to Monty Python early on. ;) But yeah, better a drive-by than not going there at all.
 
Monketi Ghost said:
All that planet/dwarf planet stuff is so weird. It drew in people who felt passionately about it, and I noticed that some never seemed to give a crap about astronomy until Pluto's status became an issue.
Even from my youngest days of interest, I could tell it was going to be debated hotly. I can recall that by the time I was ten, 1980, I'd decided it didn't have enough in common with the rest to be called a planet.
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And all that because they didn't want a solar system with 17 planets or something. Pussies.
 
Belz... said:
Why long dead ? No way to slow down the probe on the way ?
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It would need an awful lot of fuel to slow down. And of course if you need all that fuel to slow down, you need more even more fuel to carry that fuel around.
 
Belz... said:
Why long dead ? No way to slow down the probe on the way ?
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No practical way, no. First, you'd have to carry along the fuel to do that. That means accelerating the probe plus a rocket plus fuel to get there in the first place. Then halfway along you have to start slowing down. It would at least double the overall mission time.
 
I didn't mean using the probe itself to slow down but perhaps a planet(oid) on the way, etc.

Anyway, the probe will come pretty damn close to Pluto, so we should get decent pictures.
 
DGM said:
That was cool. Thanks for sharing. :)
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YW. It took me two tries to make it all the way to Pluto- the first time, I stopped somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn. And the legend at the end said a lot, too- "Might as well stop now. We'll need to scroll through 6,771 more maps like this before we see anything else." Pfft- we went a mere 39.5AU...
 
So the command to execute the fly-by sequence has been uploaded and New Horizons will not communicate with the DSN again until the sequence is complete -- around 2050 EDT Tuesday (8:50 PM Tuesday) or 0050 Wednesday UTC (1250 AM) -- by which time the probe should have suspended collection operations, pointed it's antenna back toward Earth and transmitted a diagnostic sequence. This signal should be received by NASA's 70m DSN facility at Robledo de Chavela, near Madrid, Spain.

ETA: The times cited are receive times.

Crossed fingers and tightened buttocks.
 
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