Dwarf Planet Ahoy! Spacecraft Spies Pluto and Charon 28
astroengine writes "As NASA's New Horizons probe powers through interplanetary space, it's keeping a careful eye forward, watching its target gradually loom larger on the proverbial celestial horizon. But earlier this month the spacecraft spotted something right next to Pluto — a pixelated Charon, the dwarf planet's largest moon. 'The image itself might not look very impressive to the untrained eye, but compared to the discovery images of Charon from Earth, these 'discovery' images from New Horizons look great!' said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD. 'We're very excited to see Pluto and Charon as separate objects for the first time from New Horizons.'"
Privacy (Score:3, Funny)
So the NSA isn't content with spying all over the earth, they now also spy on Pluto and Charon. No, I'm not going to let the extra A after the N fool me. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
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"Dwarf Planet" could be a cool name for a sci-fi sequel to "Dwarf Fortress".
Yeah, and here's how it would go:
You fire up the game and it immediately displays "Your settlers die a horrible death in a vacuum, wondering how the hell they got into space from their island"
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You mean:
Slaves to Armok, God of Blood
Chapter III: Dwarf Planet
There will be Space Elves and they will be even bigger jerks than the ones in Dwarf Fortress.
Oh wait, they already wrote that game, it's called Warhammer 40K.
That's no moon (Score:2)
Re:That's no moon (Score:4, Funny)
Chuck Norris (Score:1)
Just goes to show (Score:2)
these 'discovery' images from New Horizons look great! [..] We're very excited to see Pluto and Charon as separate objects for the first time from New Horizons.
Not everone gets a boner from the same things that give an astronomer one.
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True, especially when it is only going to get better if they can just keep their pants on (to extend the metaphor).
This represents a major milestone on the spacecraft’s 9½-year journey to conduct the initial reconnaissance of the Pluto system
A couple pixels worth of separation hardly seems all that significant against a flood of noise. Ring we when they get close enough to see surface detail on either
Pluto or Charon or some of the larger objects in the Kuiper Belt.
Don't tell the NSA (Score:1)
They might find the lack of communications coming from those locations to indicate suspicious activity...
It is NOT powering through interplanetary space (Score:5, Informative)
It is drifting, continuing it's journey because of its momentum: launched on 19 January 2006 ... velocity of about 16.26 km/s after its last engine was shut down [wikipedia.org]. OK: powering reads more dramatically, but is wrong.
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"power is the rate at which energy is transferred, used, or transformed." -- from Wikipedia
[pedantic mode on]
It is receiving energy from solar wind, transforming it to motion... therefore it is actually powering, even if at an insignificant rate.
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oh don't forget about internal heating. Internal heating has been slightly altering Voyager's trajectory for the last decade.
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Meanwhile the Dawn probe is powering through space using its ion drive. It's scheduled to get to Ceres a few months before New Horizons flies past Pluto. Here's the current position [nasa.gov], and there's also an interesting journal [nasa.gov].
As well as space probes seeing Pluto and Ceres, 2015 should be when the LHC is turned up to higher power, so it could be a good year for science news.
"New Horizons" (Score:2)
.
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tl:dr