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Posted by: Rob Pinnegar Jan 19 2006, 07:43 PM

Now that the candle's been lit (hurray!) presumably we will soon be finding out the exact dates New Horizons will fly past Jupiter and Pluto. This has ramifications for a number of things, including the distances of closest approach to the various Jovian satellites (including any possible passes by its outer irregulars) and the viewing geometry for the two newly discovered moons of Pluto.

I though it'd be a good idea to put this discussion in a separate thread instead of burying it in the other threads here (some of which are getting pretty huge).

[Edit: Aw, heck... I forgot to fully capitalize NH in the thread title. That looks confusing. Can someone please fix it? Thanks in advance.]

Posted by: jamescanvin Jan 19 2006, 08:46 PM

I don't think you forgot, there are lots of threads like that as the board automatically modifies all capitals after the first letter of each word to stop 'SHOUTING'.

Just to start this thread going I seen to remember hearing/reading during the launch that the pluto encounter is now on:

14th July 2015


James

Posted by: helvick Jan 19 2006, 09:41 PM

Yep Alan confirmed that again in the press conference. Apparently that will be 50 years to the day of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_4, that returned the first pictures of a planet from a deep space mission.

Posted by: jamescanvin Jan 19 2006, 10:35 PM

Indeed. What Alan didn't say (thank goodness) is that he found that out on UMSF! (from Bruce)

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=675&view=findpost&p=30913

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 19 2006, 10:38 PM

Don't count your blessings yet; I'm sure Bruce will remind us of this at least 50 times.

Posted by: djellison Jan 19 2006, 11:28 PM

Before lambasting the Discovery Program and JAXA

Doug

Posted by: Orlin Denkov Jan 20 2006, 12:25 AM

Didn't he said in the press conference that all the calculations of the tour dates etc are already done? Probably we will see them here soon.

Posted by: djellison Jan 20 2006, 08:45 AM

No - he said that they're meeting in 2 weeks to start planning the Jupiter campaign.

Doug

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 20 2006, 10:14 PM

Speaking of whom...

...where *is* Bruce? Did the Grannies Against Plutonium kidnap him? Or has just not come down enough yet after the NH launch (and who could blame him!)?

Bob Shaw