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New Horizons Releases Results
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed May 02, 2007 06:27 PM
from the when-is-the-next-train-leaving dept.
from the when-is-the-next-train-leaving dept.
hendric writes to mention New Horizons had a press conference yesterday for the preliminary results from their Jupiter flyby. Quite a few images are also available on their site, like Europa Rising."
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Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures 133 comments
sighted writes "The New Horizons probe, on its way to Pluto and beyond, is now speeding toward Jupiter. Today the team released some of the early data and pictures, which are the first close-range shots of the giant planet since the robotic Cassini spacecraft passed that way in 2001."
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New Horizons Probe's Images of Jupiter 86 comments
SeaDour writes "The Pluto-bound New Horizons space probe, launched a little over a year ago, recently succeeded in passing through a narrow navigational keyhole by Jupiter. Using the gas giant's tremendous gravity, the craft now has a significant boost toward its final destination, shaving three years off the time it would otherwise spend en-route. As it passed through the Jovian system, the probe took some fantastic images of the neighborhood, including detailed observations of erupting volcanoes on Io, time-lapse photography of Jupiter's tumultuous atmosphere, and the faint ring system that was first discovered in Voyager photography. These new images prove the capabilities of the small probe, which is set to reach Pluto in 2015."
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great stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Europa rising. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and that other message that says, "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS--EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."
Move this title dammit ! (Score:5, Informative)
Wait a minute, this doesn't seem right... (Score:2, Funny)
Let the countdown begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I suggested this and some other "Kodak Moments" (Score:5, Interesting)
Enjoying my 15 minutes of fame.
Baah, it has already seen Pluto! (Score:3, Funny)
What are we going all the way there for again??
Three Answers (Score:2)
- "We choose to go to Pluto in 2015 not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
- "Because it's a really cool way to spend $675 million."
You choose.Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't anyone care about space anymore? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the same with aviation in general, interest has been declining steadily. in 1980 there were 800,000 pilots in the US, now, just about 400,000.
I do believe that we are losing our exploratory drive; we are becoming more decadent?...nah. We're just exploring other things. Genetics and robotics, both will help us get up there I hope.
Well, you know what? Space is hard, and far. Maybe we just aren't ready for the journey yet.
hopefully someday at least our robots will be - they're already doing a bang-up job.
Re:Disillusioned (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget gas! Gas and plasma and vacuum. Vanishingly little of space is actually dust, rocks, and craters, really.
But there's plenty of gas.
-Isaac
Parent
Don't forget the gold (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the asteroid belt, next time you're in the vicinity. It's a gold mine, in every sense. The amount of wealth out there is "beyond imagination" [space.com].
Just one moderate-sized asteroid (Eros) is estimated to contain $1,000 billion in gold [crystalinks.com] alone - more than has been mined (or indeed could ever be mined ) from Earth's crust in recorded history. Then there's the platinum and the other metals, minerals and rare earths, roughly $20,000 billion in total. And there's millions of asteroids in the belt.
It's not just the mineral wealth that has people interested. It's estimated that maybe half of the asteroids are carbonaceous, containing 20% water and a further 10% oxygen [nss.org] extractable from other sources (good fuel source stuff). Additionally, there are significant amounts of carbon and nitrogen - in total, enough basic resources to support human life on a huge scale. It's likely going to be easier to colonise the asteroids than to colonise Mars.
Parent
Food (Score:2)
The energetics of growing crops with artificial light are just horrendous; there's only one crop where that's done with any regularity because of its exceptionally high value.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If we brought back a trillion bucks' worth of gold, would it still be worth that much?
Re:Disillusioned (Score:4, Insightful)
-Before we orbited the moon, everyone assumed the back would look like the front
-Before we sent a probe to Mars, nobody knew what to expect, anything a Martian civilization to... something like the Moon. Even now Mars has many aspects to it that deny simple explanation, things like what lies more than a few inches below its surface or why it has anomalous amounts of methane in its atmosphere
-Before we sent a probe to Jupiter, everyone assumed that the moons there would be cold, inanimate frozen rocks... rather than posessing the largest volcanoes and deepest oceans in the solar system
-Before we landed a probe on Titan, speculation was rife about what could be there, because you just couldn't tell. Now that have a vague idea, it's weirder than anybody guessed
If I can assure you one thing about Pluto, it will be that absolutely no one will have predicted what will be there correctly. And that's what makes it worth looking.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The swirling paisely atmosphere of Jupiter, the volanoes of Io, white frost [wikipedia.org] on red Mars rocks, the rings of Saturn, the methane lakes of Titan, the spooky blue of Neptune are all quite beautiful and amazing in my opinion. And even craters [wikipedia.org] can be amazing. But easthetics are subjective and each to his/her opinion. Yes, Earth is best, but variety is also cool.
Re:All this effort to visit a non-planet. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish the astronomy groups would get their adjective usage right, or at least consistent. A dwarf planet is somehow not a planet, but a dwarf star is a star. Sol is a dwarf star, so does that make it not a star? That sort of dissonance makes calling Ceres a planet seem sensible in comparison. Anyway, I support the notion of not calling Pluto a planet, I'm just disappointed that they had to odd twisting of words to do it.
Parent
Re:All this effort to visit a non-planet. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again, I am of the mind that says pluto should be considered a planet, since even our own and those like it are dwarfed by the massive giants by many times more than it would seem we dwarf pluto. If we're going to make these kinds of petty changes like with pluto, we should just reorganize the entire system into a single 'collections of matter' scale, starting with the particles, moving up through comets, planets, gas giants, then onto stars, nebula, galaxies, what-have-yous, up to the universe itself. And we'll give these collectives a unified naming scheme so lame and mundane yet extensable and modular that it would make even Taxonomists cry themselves to sleep.
Parent
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Gas giants can exist closer to the sun without problems, as witnessed by the discovery of "hot jupiters".
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't negate your point, but Triton (moon of Neptune) was studied by Voyager 2, and is quite likely a captured KBO. I imagine Pluto will look a lot like it.