New Horizons: One Billion Miles From Pluto 135
astroengine writes "On Feb. 10, NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons probe entered the homestretch of its mission. When you are sprinting across the solar system, 'homestretch' is the final 1 billion miles of your journey. That sounds like quite a long stretch! But the half-ton spacecraft has already logged 2 billion miles since its launch in early 2006. That's twice the distance between Earth and Saturn. Though the icy dwarf planet is still three years away from its close encounter, mission scientists call this the Late Cruise phase of the flight."
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
It flew through the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011 [wikipedia.org].
Scientists at NASA reported that it made a "woosh" noise as it did so, despite the vacuum. They then started a petition to rename Uranus to Urectum.
Re:Astronomical distances and poetry (Score:4, Funny)
Whenever I see posts like this, it always makes me think about how big the universe really is. Poets have talked about how far away the stars are and planets and the like. They always talked about hundreds or thousands of miles. Then we get to the real size of the universe and BAM! all of that is now wrong. Even modern poets usually talk in terms of "millions" of miles or kilometers to reach the stars and planets. Makes you seem really small when farther than you can even imagine is not far enough.
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Re:I'm impressed, (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it's about as different from driving as you can get. Stop for just one traffic light between here and Pluto, and see what it does to your mission profile.
Re:fingers crossed (Score:5, Funny)
Nah- Pluto is getting slashed too. A few years ago a planet, now a dwarf planet- soon it will be an asteroid and later it will be reclassified as inter-stellar debris.
Re:You are here (Score:5, Funny)
Probably sitting in front of my fish tank swatting at the glass.
I worship my cat- she is my goddess and empress of the universe. I admit, the question wasn't aimed at me, and not everyone agrees with my deity of choice.
Re:The Vertically Challenged Planet (Score:5, Funny)
You've got a point.
I bet when NASA engineers play beer pong, each cup is moving at a different speed with a different path. And you have to aim from the next city over looking through a spyglass.
Re:You are here (Score:5, Funny)
According to my dogs, I'm the god of good treats and he who knows how to make the adventure box go down the road.
Re:Astronomical distances and poetry (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I know what an order of magnitude is. It's a secret society of knights that dates back to medieval times, dedicating to raising prime numbers and other common radicals to various exponents. The most famous orders are the Power of Two and the Power of Ten, although some people, mostly retired Russian computer scientists [wikipedia.org], speak in hushed whispers of the Power of Three (though officially the Power of Three doesn't think they belong, since balanced ternary is quite different from true ternary computing.) The Power of Two used to have two junior orders, the Power of Eight and the Power of Sixteen, but Eight is pretty much defunct these days.
Re:Astronomical distances and poetry (Score:4, Funny)
Of course I know what an order of magnitude is. It's a secret society of knights that dates back to medieval times, dedicating to raising prime numbers and other common radicals to various exponents.
Yes, and the seal of their order showed ten knights riding one horse, if I remember correctly.