New Horizons late cruise, 500 Millions kms - ~200 million kms |
New Horizons late cruise, 500 Millions kms - ~200 million kms |
May 20 2014, 10:11 PM
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2251 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
New Horizon's distance from Pluto drops below 500 million km today. The main thread here has been active since before launch and until today.
Today is an appropriate day for a new thread and there are also less than 14 months until Pluto arrival (time flies!). The coming months will see more spacecraft activity than in recent years with optical navigation images of Pluto/Charon, images of Neptune etc. The next 14 months are going to be interesting to say the least. |
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Jan 20 2015, 01:29 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
I have worried because our knowledge of Pluto's position is imprecise. Some long-ago posts had mentioned that NH would expect to waste some pictures (i.e. take pics of empty space) in order to be sure it really got all of Pluto. That has bothered me for several years now (I'm greedy), so my favorite tidbit from the update on the JHUAPL site was this:
“We need to refine our knowledge of where Pluto will be when New Horizons flies past it,” said Mark Holdridge, the New Horizons encounter mission manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “The flyby timing also has to be exact, because the computer commands that will orient the spacecraft and point the science instruments are based on precisely knowing the time we pass Pluto – which these images will help us determine.” Spacecraft operators also track New Horizons using radio signals from NASA’s Deep Space Network. But the “optical navigation” campaign that begins this month marks the first time pictures from New Horizons will be used to help pinpoint Pluto’s location. |
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