NASA Spacecraft Confirms Successful Flyby of Distant Solar System Object (theverge.com) 96
NASA received a critical signal from one of its most distant spacecrafts this morning, confirming that the vehicle has just flown by a tiny frozen rock in the outer reaches of the Solar System. From a report: That space probe, named New Horizons, has now made history. Currently located more than 4 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft has now whizzed past the most distant -- and most primitive -- object that's ever been visited by humanity. "We have a healthy spacecraft," Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager for the New Horizons mission, said after confirming the feat. "We've just accomplished the most distant flyby."
"It's a flyby that's been over a decade in the making, too. Launched in 2006, New Horizons famously passed by Pluto in 2015, becoming the first mission to ever reach the dwarf planet. But ever since that flyby, New Horizons has kept on speeding through the Solar System, in order to meet up with this new object, nicknamed Ultima Thule.
"It's a flyby that's been over a decade in the making, too. Launched in 2006, New Horizons famously passed by Pluto in 2015, becoming the first mission to ever reach the dwarf planet. But ever since that flyby, New Horizons has kept on speeding through the Solar System, in order to meet up with this new object, nicknamed Ultima Thule.
Miles? (Score:1)
4 billion miles? I have no idea if that is a small number or a big number!
4000000000 miles = 6437376000 kilometres.
OMG that is very, very far!
Re: (Score:2)
I assumed that the fact that it has feet means that the spacecraft is of a "Voltron"-type design.
I guess that's better than a Guntron [pbfcomics.com] design...
Re: (Score:1)
But they confirmed the "feet"........
So they've found life in the Kuiper belt. And it even has feet. What a start to the new year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Max value of 32 bit integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
Max value of 64 bit integer is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (9.2 quintillion).
Hopefully no overflows :-0
Re: (Score:1)
Max value of 32 bit signed integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
Max value of 64 bit signed integer is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (9.2 quintillion).
Hopefully no overflows :-0
FTFY.
And unsigned 32-bit int is 4294967295; unsigned 64-bit int is 18446744073709551615
Re: (Score:2)
Max value of 32 bit integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
One would presume that distances are measured unsigned not signed, which has the range of 0-4294967296.
But anyhow, if I remember correctly, NASA has historically used BCD notation, which has no logical limit on size or precision, only physical and asserted limits. (And metric, except in press releases.)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't know when to use signed vs unsigned variables, you do not belong on Slashdot.
If you think that being able to look up the ranges of valid signed/unsigned values for a given x-bit number, you do not belong on Slashdot.
Re:Miles? (Score:5, Informative)
When talking about interplanetary distances, it is usually more intuitive to use AUs (the distance from the sun to the earth).
4000000000 miles = 43 AU. About 6 light-hours.
Astronomical Unit [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like you've never spent time to develop an intuition for how far away the sun is. It's a one-time investment, and then you can understand every distance given in AU.
Re: (Score:2)
1 AU is roughly 389x the distance to the Moon. 3,735x the circumference of the Earth. Or about 31 million times the distance to the horizon when standing at sea level.
In other words, so much larger than anything you have any frame of reference to, that you have no possibility of truly understanding it in those terms - the human brain starts having real problems accurately visualizing even a 1000x difference in scale, most people have trouble with even 100x.
If you want to visualize anything in astronomy, y
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What is that in Kessel runs?
The Kessel run can be completed in 12 parsecs. A parsec is 1/(sin(1/3600)) = 206265 AUs.
So 43 AU would be 43/(206265*12) = 0.000017 Kessel runs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
FIY I'm Canadian, one of the few countries on the planet that has to deal with both Imperial and Metric units in every aspect of our lives, every day. Basically everything around us that uses a measurement system of any kind has either both or only one.
Re: (Score:2)
I did not say "the only country" I said "one of the few countries". The UK was a given.
But the last time I saw things from a USA grocery store, pratically everything was in ounces and pounds, not grams and kilograms.
Re: (Score:2)
The U.S.A. is officially a non-metric country. Canada and the UK are officially metric countries but have to deal with imperial measurements every day. Example: my grocery flyers are full of imperial-only numbers... but I grew up learning metric. Why the fuck are the numbers advertised in the flyers not all 100% metric? That's the difference between the USA and Canada/UK.
Re: Miles? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I (as european) find it much easier to convert from metric to imperial than the other way around.
For example, a mile is about 1.6km. Multiplying by 1.6 is much easier than dividing by 1.6.
A pound is close enough to our traditional 'metric' pound (1/2 kg) to not cause any significant confusion (btw, we are legally not allowed to use the word 'pound' in my country). A gallon is close to 4L (3.8), and a quart is roughly a liter. From Celsius to Fahrenheit is pretty easy too, once you have one or two 'setpoints
Re: (Score:2)
For lengths, Imperial can be a real bitch. Adding 5-3/8" to 3-7/16" is a heck of a lot more complicated than metric.
And then there's the mix between different base systems. 12 inches to a foot, but the inch itself is divided by 8/16/32/64 instead of by 12 like the foot is. Then there's three feet to a yard, and 32*5*11 yards to a mile, 16 ounces to a pound, and 14 pounds to a stone.
Then there's the money with 1, 5, 10 and 25 cents, but 1, 5, 10, 20 dollars. Why is there a 25 cent coin but not a 25 doll
Re: (Score:2)
Lengths are a whole separate issue - you can buy decimal-inch rulers, just like you can buy fractional-centimeter rulers. It's just that they're more difficult to find than "normal" versions.
Fractional rulers are very useful when building things by hand, where you very often end up wanting to divide lengths in half. It does however make both calculations and comparison of different sub-unit lengths more difficult. But most people these days don't build things, at least not often enough to learn how to us
Re: (Score:2)
If you want intuitive and practical why not go back a little further? A hand is more practical for most things than either an inch or a foot, and actually maps more gracefully to metric than its own system: 1 hand = 4 inches = 1/3 foot =~ 10cm
I also prefer cm to inches for the same reason you like Farenheit for temperature: A half an inch difference is noticeable (visually & functionally) in most contexts, which means a whole lot of inch measurements need to be fractional, while you can usually design
Re: (Score:2)
"beer is sold in pints" Even Pippin was surprised by this.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Basically everything around us that uses a measurement system of any kind has either both or only one.
This is true for most countries in the world, including the US. Think about it...
Re: (Score:3)
If you want to include modern miles and Roman miles under the same heading then you're talking relative errors of 9%. That's not exactly suited for engineering. Whereas the error from the original definition of the kilometre (one forty-thousandth of the circumference of the Earth) to the modern one is 0.08%.
But if you want to ditch the historical perspective and just think about the modern units, a /. reader should be able to convert between miles and kilometres really easily. The conversion factor of 1.609
Re: (Score:1)
I am sure that your own country's space program, that took scientific observations of Pluto and a Kuiper Belt object, did much better. Which country was that, again?
Re: (Score:2)
The country that built the legs of the lunar lander and the arm of the space shuttle.
Re: (Score:1)
Then congratulations, you are a .05% contributor to space exploration!
Re: (Score:2)
Still, the Canadian legs of the lunar lander touched the moon before Neil Armstrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One small step for....
Well? (Score:4)
Re:Well? (Score:4, Informative)
lol "the verge". slashdot has really gone downhill.
It's Not much to see anyway [jhuapl.edu]
MOD UP (Score:1)
Sorry to steal your link man, at the time I posted you were at -1. Glad to see you getting the recognition you deserve...
Re: Well? (Score:1)
After 13 years you can wait one more day
Just hope they remembered to take the lense cap off
Here's a link to pictures (Score:4, Informative)
This link is stolen from an AC that responded to you, inexplicably down-modded despite having very useful information:
Ultima Thule pictures [jhuapl.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
I tried this justification about myself with my wife. Didn't work.
What now? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I heard it was making a second pass by Saturn next year
Definitely not. It's nowhere near Saturn and doesn't even begin to have the fuel to get there.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, NH is not in an heliocentric orbit and cannot currently attempt to come back inside the Kuiper belt perimeter at current velocity with its remaining delta-V from thrusters, or at least get to any usable heliocentric orbit. It would need a massive object to further alter trajectory. There might be other flyby targets possible, but they would always be farther away.
You can see the current NH trajectory here:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ [jhuapl.edu]
Re:What now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
But you never know. We could get lucky and discover another KBO along the spacecraft's trajectory close enough to use thrusters for another close flyby.
If we get really lucky, New Horizons could find another KBO by colliding with it. There's always a chance.
They still think digital watches are cool (Score:2)
In what sense is it primitive? Still running a 32bit 2.4 kernel? Did the probe get showered with spears and arrows as it flew past?
Re:They still think digital watches are cool (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Gilligan, little buddy, is that you?
Re: (Score:1)
Because it's so far from the sun, the density and speed of colliding objects are known to be far lower than in the inner solar system. Chances are its surface is still little changed from when it was formed.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not primitive, That's just old.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only that, it's still using SysV init!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't the federal government out of control, it is the rest of us. Any threat to SS and Medicare (the biggest part of the budget) is met with angst, and threats of revenge. Americans also like the rest of the world not being run by those nice Chinese and Russians. How about that farm bill, gotta fund those family farms even if most of it goes to corporate farms.
To make matters worse, the Republicans decided to pay off their corporate masters and gave them a tax decrease which they promptly spent on share
Re: (Score:2)
Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
The probe is going about 8 miles per second. The object is about 20 miles across. That means it passes the distance of the object's size in less than 3 seconds.
At closest approach, the object appears roughly the apparent size of our moon from Earth according to one article.
Thus, if you were sitting on the probe, and put your thumb out and up next to Thule, held it steady and closed one eye, your thumb would cover the distance of it in about 3 seconds.
It also means the probe only has a minute or two to use its instruments near closest approach. The fly-by speed is almost comparable to watching a high plane fly overhead.
Being the probe has to swivel its entire body to aim each instrument, that's a lot of dancing in a short time slot. (Some instruments point the same direction to save swiveling.) Further, the exact position wasn't precisely known ahead of time, so many instruments and cameras have to scan an area larger than the target to be sure they cover it.
Operators sent a "timing correction" to the probe a couple of days ago they said was a 2-second shift, applying updated navigation info using recent probe photos (when Thule was still a spec). I can see why 2 seconds makes a difference at that speed.
What have the Romans ever done for us? (Score:2)
Cue the "NASA hasn't put a man on Mars so it's useless" wailing.