1st space craft to ever fly by Pluto = success confirmed

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

It's official: NASA's New Horizons became the first spacecraft ever to fly by Pluto today, passing within 7,750 miles of the dwarf planet at 7:49 am ET.

This fact was widely celebrated this morning (including on this site), but in reality no one knew whether the probe successfully made it until scientists received a signal this evening. That's because New Horizons was busy collecting data during the flyby — not transmitting it — and once it did send a signal, the transmission took 4.5 hours to reach Earth.

Now, after receiving the signal this evening, mission scientists have confirmed that the probe made it through as planned (there was roughly a 1-in-10,000 chance it could have been hit by a piece of errant space debris). The first photos of the encounter should arrive sometime tomorrow, and over the next weeks and months, we'll see gorgeous, high-resolution photos of Pluto — 10 times sharper than anything taken so far.

New Horizons traveled 3 billion miles to get to Pluto

But even moving at speeds as high as 50,000 miles per hour, it took nearly a decade to reach Pluto because of a simple fact: It's incredibly far away. By analogy, if you imagine the Earth to be a basketball, Pluto would be a little larger than a golf ball — and at the same scale, that golf ball would be 50 to 80 miles away.

This distance also means that the craft had to be fairly light (about 1,000 pounds) to get there in a reasonable amount of time, which precluded it from carrying enough fuel to slow down to enter Pluto's orbit. Consequently, it was moving at about 31,000 miles per hour during the flyby — and traversed the diameter of Pluto in just a few minutes.
New Horizons is about to reveal Pluto for the first time

Until very recently, the best photos we had of Pluto (taken by the Hubble Space Telescope) showed it as a blurry blob:

New Horizons quickly surpassed the quality of those images during the past few weeks of its approach to Pluto, capturing much sharper images of the dwarf planet and its moons. But even this will be outdone by the photos taken today during the actual flyby, which are projected to be 10 times sharper.

We should see the first of these Wednesday afternoon, and the rest should trickle in over the coming weeks because New Horizons is only capable of transmitting data at a very slow rate.

They should reveal a fascinating new landscape, shedding light on the ice caps and plains scientists have spotted in recent images, as well as features we simply haven't seen yet.

:2thumbs

:usa

:sheen

[Eye_of_Horus]

Pluto is real to me , dammit!

[Muck FcDisney]

If that thing isn't planting US flags at every planet (or in Pluto's case, "planet-like thing") along the way, we have failed. Claim dat shit! :usa

[MIAMIDOMINATION]

did they find life?

[08GatorBait]

That is awesome

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

[ img ][ img ][ img ][ img ]

[ericberry14]

Obviously created by aliens

[FSUKW]

Full credit goes to Obama...

[gatrnation1]

I'm just happy to drive my drunk ass to Checkers...

[frazier9495]

Playstation ftw :4thumbs

The New Horizons space probe which recently completed a flyby of Pluto and beamed new images of the planet back to Earth is being guided by the same CPU which powered the original PlayStation console. As reported by The Verge, the probe contains a MIPS R3000 CPU, repurposed to "fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and transmit data."

The same CPU was used in the original PlayStation console, which was first released in 1994 and ran at 33.8688MHz. It was implemented by NASA scientists in the New Horizons Space Probe, which was launched in 2006 and has travelled more than three billion miles in its journey.

According to The Verge, NASA has always preferred hardware that has been "tried-and-tested" over newer technology, which may be riskier to use. Reliability is prioritised over power, which is why a 12-year-old CPU was used, with a few tweaks made to help with surviving in space.

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

How our view of Pluto has changed over the years[ img ]

[JdPat04]

It's still a fucking planet to me GAWWDAMMIT!!!!

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

[ img ]"The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations," said Jeff Moore, a co-investigator on the New Horizons team.

Members of the New Horizons team revealed a selection of new photos at a Friday news conference, but scientists are still unable to make conclusive claims about much of the new data. The spacecraft has only sent back about 1 to 2% of its data. NASA officials said it should have about 5% of the data by next week, but will take until 2016 to receive all of it.

"With the flyby in the rearview mirror, a decade-long journey to Pluto is over — but, the science payoff is only beginning," said Jim Green, NASA's director of Planetary Science. "Data from New Horizons will continue to fuel discovery for years to come."