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."

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[WrongSizeGlass]

Fuking Cartman, it's not funny anymore!

great stuff

[passionfruit]

very fascinating indeed. did you guys see the pictures of the massive volcanic plume rising from Io? i remember watching Io and the 4 moons of jupiter including Ganemede from my 2.5 inch refracting telescope as a child.

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[dedazo]

That photograph of the plume is one of the most amazing pictures I've ever seen. It was Voyager II that first gave us a glimpse of the Loki Patera volcano on Io and that was amazing enough, but that image just takes the cake. It has a ghostly 3-D deal going on that is simply breathtaking.

All this effort to visit a non-planet.

[Palmyst]

But at least, it is a taking the scenic route.

Re:All this effort to visit a non-planet.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It may be a non-planet, but none of the Kuiper belt objects have been studied yet, and Pluto is a start.

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.

Re:All this effort to visit a non-planet.

[Dr. Eggman]

Calling the Sun a dwarf star is misleading. In terms of stars there are dwarf and giant categories, but for planets there is (now I guess) dwarf planets, planets, and gas giant planets. Our sun, is a dwarf star, but that is also called a main sequence star. Pluto is not exactly your typical planet it would seem.

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.

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[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think Neil deGrasse Tyson was onto something about Pluto though, it's mostly a ball of ice that would turn into a comet if it were to ever come as close to the sun as Jupiter is. The fact that it orbits at an angle well outside the ecliptic was another problem in why Pluto didn't fit the planetary sequence very well.

Gas giants can exist closer to the sun without problems, as witnessed by the discovery of "hot jupiters".

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[khallow]

There isn't a "planetary sequence" and I bet Pluto is actually the most common type of body by numbers in the Solar System.

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[mandolin]

It may be a non-planet, but none of the Kuiper belt objects have been studied yet, and Pluto is a start.

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.

Europa rising.

[HaeMaker]

That would be a cool picture if it didn't have an ugly cheeto colored banner saying "Europa Rising".

Oh, and that other message that says, "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS--EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."

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 )

Wait a minute, this doesn't seem right...

[Merc248]

Where the hell is the trippy 15 minute warp sequence?

Re:Disillusioned

[isaac]

I mean, what's the point of going into space if all it is is dust, rocks, and craters.

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

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[Kazrath]

Yeah but after a big bowl of beans I can find plenty of gas on earth.

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[ady1]

But there's plenty of gas.

Darn eating habits.

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[FluxIntegrator]

There is no point, unless we are capable of near light speed travel. There is NOTHING of real significance in our solar system, other than the Earth, (and, of course, the Sun as an energy source). We must stick to the Earth (and possibly the moon as a last resort) for now. There is no point in us spending all of this money creating probes that image planets that have absolutely no impact on life here on Earth. Granted, the technology they have developed is useful, and has contributed significantly, but w

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[FluxIntegrator]

It's not the cost of the raw materials, it's the cost putting those raw materials into space, and THEN making sure that everything goes as planned. When you're talking about the number of probes we've sent off, you're talking about a LOT of money. That money and research goes into designing a system that's going to tolerate the extremes of space, that's going to send back data over huge distances, and that's going to containing sensors capable of reading large amounts of data. All of those scientists and

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[Ihlosi]

All of those scientists and engineers could actually be doing something that would improve life on Earth.

Yeah. Just think of all the weapons, bombs, guns, and various other war toys for killing $CURRENT_ENEMY could be built with all that manpower and $$.

Instead their wasting time on their space toys.

They're taking money that would be spent on war toys and don't spend it on war toys. That's good enough.

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[Ihlosi]

Technology has the ability to deal with some of those social problems,

Yeah. First thing, we need a device that's permanently implanted in every politician and that delivers electric shocks whenever it detects lies or BS. That would solve a lot of these problems.

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[amilham]

You say in the same sentence "Granted, the technology they have developed is useful, and has contributed significantly," and "but we are wasting money we just don't have by actually sending probes to other planets". If it has been useful and contributed significantly, why is it a waste of money?

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[djp928]

The day we lose our urge to explore is the day we stop being human. It's also the day our entire race shrivels up and dies. Nobody climbs mountains because there's something of value at the top. Mountains are climbed because they are there, and they need climbing. Similarly, the planets in our solar system are explored because they are there, and they need exploring.

I die a little inside everytime I hear someone say crap like this. Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure, the urge to explore, the

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.

Food

[Goonie]

That's all very well, but there's one very important thing that's going to be easier to do on Mars than on the asteroids - growing crops.

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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[yotto]

Why do you need artificial lights to grow crops on an asteroid? Other than the vacuum (Needing stronger glass and better seams) it seems to me growing crops on an asteroid would be about the same as growing them on Mars.

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[khallow]

That's probably why they'll use sunlight instead. You'd have to be pretty far away from the Sun before artifical light becomes competitive with the real thing. Still, if they're willing to grow marijuana via inefficient sunlamps now on Earth, you can bet good money that someone will grow vital crops via extremely efficient light sources. It shows that artificial light is not that horrendously inefficient.

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[Repton]

If we brought back a trillion bucks' worth of gold, would it still be worth that much?

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[CommunistHamster]

Of course not, but with a new insane surplus of gold, new uses might be found for it. That goes for platinum and other currently-rare-but-soon-to-be-abundant raw materials.

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[Convector]

But what would be the cost of actually bringing that material back to Earth? Would we expend more trying to get it than the metal's actually worth? Also, TFA quoted some number for the amount of aluminum Eros may contain, and then went on to say "similar amounts of gold, platinum, . . ." The chondritic abundance of aluminum is half a million times greater than gold (Lodders, 2003, ApJ 591, 1220), so I'm not sure where that comes from. (Lodders, 2003, ApJ 591, 1220). The mass of Eros is 7*10^15 kg. Th

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[Ihlosi]

But what would be the cost of actually bringing that material back to Earth?

Why spend money on something that makes the material worth less ? If you care about space exploration, then any amount of somewhat-refined material that's not sitting in Earths gravity well is worth a lot more than anything that is.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nothing has been the way we thought it would be:
-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.

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[Tablizer]

Space is boring...the whole solar system seems to be dust, rocks, and craters.

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.

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[BungaDunga]

easthetics are subjective

I go for westhetics myself, but to each his own.

Let the countdown begin!

[Dr. Eggman]

Only 2994 days until we reach the closest mission path point to Pluto! As official decorate-for-the-holidays time manager for Sears, I have a special talent for knowing when to begin reminding people of important events so I declare the countdown to Pluto to be on! We'll start laying out the plastic globes in 2010...

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[HaeMaker]

I only celebrate planet fly-bys.

I suggested this and some other "Kodak Moments"

[hendric]

Before the flyby, the New Horizons science team asked a bunch of us amateurs at http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/ [unmannedspaceflight.com] to search for "pretty pictures", pictures that didn't necessarily have scientific value, but were beautiful and worth taking. Europa Rising and the Io and Europa conjunction [jhuapl.edu] were the first two returned. The others I suggested were two double shadow transits, a crescent Callisto emerging from behind a crescent Jupiter, and a crescent Ganymede in front of a crescent Jupiter.
Enjoying my 15 minutes of fame. :)

Baah, it has already seen Pluto!

[Jugalator]

It has already seen Pluto! Twice, even! (one [jhuapl.edu], two [jhuapl.edu])

What are we going all the way there for again?? :-p

Three Answers

[R3d M3rcury]

1. "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."
2. "Because it's a really cool way to spend $675 million."

You choose.

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[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.

Excellent

[madbawa]

The pics are excellent and the technology is even more fascinating. I have one quick question though. Its not related to this topic in anyway. Request the mods to please not mark it offtopic as I would really appreciate replies:

I have seen a lot of photos of the Milky Way galaxy i.e. our galaxy (the pics show it being something of a spiral with our sun as a tiny dot). My question is how are these pics clicked? And how are they transmitted back to earth? As far as I know, to actually click the pic of a galax

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[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

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[rantingkitten]

All images of our galaxy are either composite images based on what we can see from Earth -- a bunch of pictures put together into a whole -- or are not actually our own galaxy, but other similar spiral galaxies, used for illustration.

Doesn't anyone care about space anymore?

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

It's sad to me that this story has so few comments. Outer space just holds less and less allure to the populace as time moves forward. Why is that? Especially as we are just starting to get some of the really sci-fi 21st century stuff going. is the 21st century to be the last century of space exploration?

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.

It will come back some day.

[master_p]

Interest for space will come back some day. As it is right now, the world is headed for a second middle ages, with the difference that it will not last 1000+ years, due to technological developers. In this new middle ages, the vast majority of the population will fall for religions, astrology, and stuff, and there are going to be great wars.

When we come out of that, there is going to be a renewed interest for space. Too bad we are not going to be around to witness it.

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[noims]

> Well, you know what? Space is hard, and far. Maybe we just aren't ready for the journey yet.

Space isn't that far away... only about an hour's drive, albeit straight up.

Mach 65!

[wirefall]

If I calculated it right...putting it in those terms just makes it that much more impressive to me.