New Horizons Releases Results

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."

Move this title dammit !

[A_Lost_Frenchman]

You might want to see the photo of Europa rising from the original website : http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/imag es/HighRes/050107/050107_01.jpg [jhuapl.edu] ( Especially after seeing the huge title across the first picture )

Don't forget the gold

[Namarrgon]

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.

Re:Three Answers

[samkass]

... seriously, though, the opportunity for a good gravity-assist trajectory was there now, and since Pluto is hurtling away from the sun quickly, if we don't visit it now it'll be a lot less active until our great-grandchildren get the next opportunity.

Re:Excellent

[wwmedia]

they are computer generated (from data gathered from various telescopes)

as for probes, only pioneer 10,11 ( Pioneer program [wikipedia.org] ) and voyager 1 and 2 Voyager program [wikipedia.org]

have left the solar system and are now somewhere in or past the very outer reaches of the solar system (take them millions of years to get to nearest stars??)

new horizons will be the next probe to join them