Yeah, it's a pity that we can't flip on the infinite-fuel cheat and magic up some massive delta-v to get into orbit and hang around for a while. But even the little time we have there should give us some amazing pictures. The cool part is that the closest fly-by is right before my birthday, so I'll get some pretty pictures to look at as presents. :D
I'm so anxious! It's such a quick flyby! What if a programmer goofed up? What if we miss our chance? What if the pictures are really horrible?? What if it's just a boring grey blob?? :shaking:
The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of July 4 that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.
The mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, lost contact with the unmanned spacecraft -- now 10 days from arrival at Pluto -- at 1:54 p.m. EDT, and regained communications with New Horizons at 3:15 p.m. EDT, through NASA’s Deep Space Network.
During that time the autonomous autopilot on board the spacecraft recognized a problem and – as it’s programmed to do in such a situation - switched from the main to the backup computer. The autopilot placed the spacecraft in “safe mode,” and commanded the backup computer to reinitiate communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.
A New Horizons Anomaly Review Board (ARB) was convened at 4 p.m. EDT to gather information on the problem and initiate a recovery plan. The team is now working to return New Horizons to its original flight plan. Due to the 9-hour, round trip communication delay that results from operating a spacecraft almost 3 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, full recovery is expected to take from one to several days; New Horizons will be temporarily unable to collect science data during that time.
Status updates will be issued as new information is available.
That's a very short encounter for such a long time waiting. Interplanetary travel is crazy.
NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.
The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter “safe mode” on July 4 has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft. The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.
“I’m pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. “Now – with Pluto in our sights – we’re on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold.”
Don't forget, HLP is free to throw a Plutopalooza party upon New Horizon's historic flyby of Pluto! Click here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Participate/community/Plutopalooza-Toolkit.php (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Participate/community/Plutopalooza-Toolkit.php).
Also, what if we discover a Shivan base on Pluto? o.ORejoice that there isn't a Gamilas base hurling asteroids at Earth instead.
have we ruled out the existence of fwiffo yet
have we ruled out the existence of fwiffo yet
Looks a lot more varied than I thought it would be, I was expecting more or less just a monochrome dirty snowball, stuff is going on there, which makes it much more interesting :)
*gorgeous picture*
[spoiler-media]I didn't even know we had that tag. :O
Get off my lawn, probe!
A striking dark region at [Charon's] pole may be a thin veneer on top of redder material, she added. It has been informally named MordorOne does not simply orbital slingshot into Mordor!