New Horizons Mission to Pluto

[MartG]

[Moonhawk]

jmorgan said:

Juno next year for Jupiter.

Yep - should be interesting, but just a shame it's mission profile is so limited (focussed almost entirely on Jupiter itself).

Jupiter's moons are so varied and potentially game changing (with regards to life elsewhere in the universe). It would be nice to have a Cassini style mission to Jupiter.

[hornet]

Moonhawk said:

Yep - should be interesting, but just a shame it's mission profile is so limited (focussed almost entirely on Jupiter itself).

Jupiter's moons are so varied and potentially game changing (with regards to life elsewhere in the universe). It would be nice to have a Cassini style mission to Jupiter.

ESA has one planned, although won't get there until 2030, so probably best not to wait up!

http://sci.esa.int/juice/

[budfox]

I could almost cry when I see what brilliance man is capable of and compare it to the horrors he can also inflict.

[S10GTA]

budfox said:

I could almost cry when I see what brilliance man is capable of and compare it to the horrors he can also inflict.

How poetic. Very well written.

[Russ35]

Communication re-established and spacecraft is healthy.

[Mojocvh]

This is really exciting!

[200bhp]

So what happens to the probe now? How long will it travel for?

[jmorgan]

Press kit says dat beam back well into 2016 then examining extended mission options for 2017. There is the Kuiper belt and then interstellar space.

[p1stonhead]

S10GTA said:

budfox said:

I could almost cry when I see what brilliance man is capable of and compare it to the horrors he can also inflict.

How poetic. Very well written.

Imagine how far we would go as a species if we all focussed on achieving single aims instead of killing each other all over the place. We would be far far beyond where we are now.

I read that Horizons, once into Interstellar space, will effectively last forever? There isnt anything which can decay/erode/damage it out there so it will likely outlast us and even things like the Earth itself? Staggering to think of if true.

[Moonhawk]

200bhp said:

So what happens to the probe now? How long will it travel for?

There are a couple of other candidate objects on it's flightpath that it may be able to intercept and image - then it's onwards and outwards forever (or until it hits something).

[Eric Mc]

Like the two much older Voyagers before it and a number of other space probes and rovers, New Horizons is powered by a nuclear Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). This uses the heat released by the decay of Plutonium to generate electricity. RTGs can supply power for decades. Voyagers 1 and 2 are still working after 38 years in space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoe...

[jmorgan]

Moonhawk said:

It would be nice to have a Cassini style mission to Jupiter.

Cassini is superb. Did I read that this is coming to an end though in 2017 with a Viking funeral by the sounds of it.



Interestingly one of Cassini's back up RTG is used on New Horizons.

[Eric Mc]

The Galileo mission in the mid 1990s was essentially Jupiter's "Cassini".

[jmorgan]

Twitter says first look date coming in.

[scubadude]

jmorgan said:

Interestingly one of Cassini's back up RTG is used on New Horizons.

AFAIK That is because they aren't making those RTG's anymore.


New Horizons eventual fate (along with Voyagers, Pioneers and various other bits, including the 3rd stages that sent all of the above en-route) will probably be the last existing bits of humanity. It seems improbably that we're work out how to become an interstellar civilisation before we either use up the Earth or the Sun swallows it... bit melancholy perhaps but I can visualise New Horizons sailing on silently for billions of years after the Sun blows our solar system to dust.

Perhaps if more people grasped the tenuous, temporary nature of our existence and the vastness into which NH and Voyager etc are dispatched into they might act with a bit more thought... no actually they wouldn't because people are generically selfish a*seholes :-)

[jmorgan]

I assume it was for economy or was there another reason?



Spooky thing is now, when we get to see something, we will have Earth in shot, well, all that we are.

[Eric Mc]

scubadude said:

no actually they wouldn't because people are generically selfish a*seholes :-)

Don't forget the miserable, pessimistic gits.

[Nuclear Biscuit]

ash73 said:

Amazing how much the image improved in just 24 hours, let's hope the flyby pics are similar step

[jmorgan]

Wondered when that would crop up, it seems a dead cert since Mimas.