Any definitive KBO for NH, yet? |
Any definitive KBO for NH, yet? |
Feb 28 2006, 06:38 PM
Post
#1
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
Is any definitive KBO selected for New Horizons, yet?
-------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 07:14 PM
Post
#2
|
|
Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Is any definitive KBO selected for New Horizons, yet? Alan Stern or John Spencer may correct or expand on this, but here's how I answered that question for the February 6 Planetary Radio: "Once New Horizons passes Pluto, it will have only a very limited ability to change its course, which means that it can only study Kuiper belt objects that happen to lie within a roughly one-degree cone around its path. Unfortunately, none of the more famous Kuiper belt objects, including 2003 UB313, Quaoar, Chaos, Ixion, or Varuna, will lie within that cone. The mission planners do want to visit a reasonably large object, bigger than 50 kilometers in diameter, and hope to find one that has a different color from Pluto so may represent a different kind of evolutionary history. But no Kuiper belt object has yet been identified that fits the mission's criteria.There are several excellent reasons for the New Horizons planners to delay their choice of Kuiper belt targets. First of all, which bodies would be in reach of New Horizons depended to a great extent on the spacecraft's launch date. But the most important reason is that the Kuiper belt objects that New Horizons will study have very likely not been discovered yet. Only about a thousand of them are now recognized and tracked. In fact, very few are known to lie in orbits near New Horizons' path, because New Horizons happens to be headed toward the galactic center. Astronomers have avoided searching for objects there because the density of the star field in that part of the sky makes it challenging to find them. But several new observatories and experiments are being developed that will multiply number of known objects by a factor of ten or more by the time New Horizons arrives at Pluto. For example, the Pan-STARRS observatory under construction by the University of Hawaii is a wide-field imager that will come online in 2009. It is estimated that Pan-STARRS could discover twenty thousand Kuiper belt objects over its operational lifetime, giving New Horizons lots of options." In other words, I expect it'll be a while --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 07:23 PM
Post
#3
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
Thanks Emily.
-------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 07:24 PM
Post
#4
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
Actually there is a plan to search for KBO's wich Hew Horizons may fly by. Most of them would be quite small and faint, fainter than Panstarrs is planned to go, and the background includes the Milky Way. I believe there is a link to the paper describing the search options in the New Horizons thread.
|
|
|
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Feb 28 2006, 07:34 PM
Post
#5
|
Guests |
Actually there is a plan to search for KBO's wich Hew Horizons may fly by. Most of them would be quite small and faint, fainter than Panstarrs is planned to go, and the background includes the Milky Way. I believe there is a link to the paper describing the search options in the New Horizons thread. I think I referenced in another thread* John Spencer's pre-launch paper on this topic. One may also wish to check out John Spencer's pre-launch web page on this subject. I don't know how dated this info is but it is informative. *EDIT: Here's the post I was referring to. I think the preprint of the Earth, Moons, and Planets paper is on the web site above. |
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 08:06 PM
Post
#6
|
|
Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
I think I referenced in another thread* John Spencer's pre-launch paper on this topic. One may also wish to check out John Spencer's pre-launch web page on this subject. I don't know how dated this info is but it is informative. Alex, I think Doug should change your UMSF title from "Member" to "Reference Librarian." Thanks for the link (again). --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
|
|
|
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Feb 28 2006, 08:17 PM
Post
#7
|
Guests |
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 08:41 PM
Post
#8
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
Interesting paper. Thanks.
-------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 09:09 PM
Post
#9
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
Only 500.000 KBOs are bigger than 40 kilometers?
-------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
|
|
|
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Feb 28 2006, 09:20 PM
Post
#10
|
Guests |
Interesting paper. Thanks. That paper was published in a special issue of Earth, Moon, and Planets (Volume 92, Numbers 1-4, June 2003) entitled "The First Decadal Review of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt." Indeed, at one point, I believe Springer was offering free online access to the entire issue. |
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 09:54 PM
Post
#11
|
|
Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
What about that Centaur Alan mentioned as a far encounter? Any word on which one that will be? I assume Alan would prefer to save the extra fuel from the launch correctional manuevers on KBOs instead of trying to get closer to this Centaur?
-------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 10:03 PM
Post
#12
|
|
Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
|
|
|
Feb 28 2006, 10:42 PM
Post
#13
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Alex deserves it. Totally OT for this thread, but what the hell - when I first set up the old forum, I put Alex in as a co-admin as a matter of backup incase I got run over, or worse (knowing he had experience with his Yahoo group) - then when I sorted out a few proper admins a few months ago, I forgot to carry Alex over Doug |
|
|
Mar 1 2006, 02:50 PM
Post
#14
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 699 Joined: 3-December 04 From: Boulder, Colorado, USA Member No.: 117 |
In fact we have already conducted a preliminary search with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, and are currently sifting through the 100s of Gbytes of data to find any particularly bright KBOs that might be heading our way. Because of our favorable launch and the large amount of fuel we therefore have on board, we'll have a bigger choice of KBOs than we would have had otherwise, which is good news. Even if our preliminary search turns up a good candidate, we'll probably conduct another deeper search in about five years. By then, the search area will be smaller, because all accessible KBOs are, by definition, converging on the spacecraft trajectory.
|
|
|
Mar 1 2006, 03:26 PM
Post
#15
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 562 Joined: 29-March 05 Member No.: 221 |
|
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 8th May 2024 - 03:04 AM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |