New Horizon Cameras Options

[Guest_vjkane2000_*]

I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri). Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.

[edstrick]

Bob Shaw: "... but it doesn't change the fact that nowadays the problems are known yet dumb mistakes keep getting made. "

AMEN.

I think it was a BAD mistake not to have a coarse focus adjustment on the deep impact camera.

A big "Uh... I thought we knew about this..." problem... Stardust had a massive problem with condensate from outgassed crud fogging the optics. The earth-flyby image of the moon was 90% fog and 10% image.... massively blurred. Repeated heating of the camera to degass the optics got most of it, but I'm not at all sure they ever did get all of it and the Wildt comet flyby pics I think are somewhat degraded by it. NEAR's optics were significantly fogged by hydrazine byproducts during the loss-of-control event at the first arrival burn attempt that nearly lost the mission (not the camera's fault), and Cassini has had significant fogging problems between Jupiter and Saturn that I think still has some residual that makes it impossible to search for low brightness outgassing plumes at Enceladus.

Fogged optics seem to be the other problem-of-the-decade, besides out of focus cameras.