Couldn't the New Horizon had a impact probe for pluto?

[omelaw]

Would it deal too much damage to pluto? or not enough bandwidth?

it'd hit pluto like 30km/s but..

[Rakaydos]

What would the point be? If pluto had an atmosphere, it would burn up before successfully aerobreaking, and if it didn't, it would be instantly destroyed by the impact.

[fredinno]

5 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

What would the point be? If pluto had an atmosphere, it would burn up before successfully aerobreaking, and if it didn't, it would be instantly destroyed by the impact.

Well,it could study the atmosphere on the way down,but New Horisons was too budget limited to add an impactor.

[pincushionman]

Would have had trouble getting a good set of photos. You need to adjust "orbits" so your impactor arrives well ahead of your cameras so you can get a good shot,  but NH was travelling so fast to begin with that would have been extraordinarily difficult.

[gooddog15]

3 words: Every Gram Counts.

New Horizons was designed to be as light as possible, allowing for the greatest amount of payload to be flung towards Pluto in a bearable amount of time. JPL wanted to have as many instruments as they could integrate into the spacecraft (they managed to fit 5), so an impactor is out the question. NH would have to have equipment used to track and monitor the probe until impact, specialized instruments that can analyze the impact, and a support frame for the probe that's useless after deployment. All of that subtracts any remaining mass dedicated for more important instruments like RALPH or ALICE, and would be just dead mass that would significantly hamper the secondary KBO flyby mission.

Edited March 15, 2016 by gooddog15

[Exploro]

14 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

What would the point be? If pluto had an atmosphere, it would burn up before successfully aerobreaking, and if it didn't, it would be instantly destroyed by the impact.

It was educated conjecture that Pluto likely had a tenuous atmosphere even before NH confirmed it's existence. Thus a hypothetical Pluto impactor would not have been designed with to handle an atmospheric entry at all. Further I can see scientific usefulness of cataloging the material that makes up surface of bodies like Pluto. An impactor throwing out material into space for a parent probe to analyze would certainly achieve that.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Exploro

[sevenperforce]

16 minutes ago, Exploro said:

It was educated conjecture that Pluto likely had a tenuous atmosphere even before NH confirmed it's existence. Thus a hypothetical Pluto impactor would not have been designed with to handle an atmospheric entry at all. Further I can see scientific usefulness of cataloging the material that makes up surface of bodies like Pluto. An impactor throwing out material into space for a parent probe to analyze would certainly achieve that.

The parent probe would have been well past Pluto long before the ejecta cloud would rise.

[Exploro]

46 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

The parent probe would have been well past Pluto long before the ejecta cloud would rise.

Not necessarily. The flyby spacecraft can maneuver in a manner that allows for observation of the ejecta; much like in the Deep Impact mission a decade ago. Such a maneuver itself would require little in the way of delta-v to accomplish; a few m/s at most.

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, Exploro said:

Not necessarily. The flyby spacecraft can maneuver in a manner that allows for observation of the ejecta; much like in the Deep Impact mission a decade ago. Such a maneuver itself would require little in the way of delta-v to accomplish; a few m/s at most.

Oh, my bad -- I thought you were suggesting that New Horizons would actually intercept and sample the ejecta.

[Bill Phil]

Impactors are really only useful if you have something else already on the surface.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Exploro said:

It was educated conjecture that Pluto likely had a tenuous atmosphere even before NH confirmed it's existence. Thus a hypothetical Pluto impactor would not have been designed with to handle an atmospheric entry at all. Further I can see scientific usefulness of cataloging the material that makes up surface of bodies like Pluto. An impactor throwing out material into space for a parent probe to analyze would certainly achieve that.

Pluto was known to have an atmosphere before NH, so any probe WOULD have heat shields for reentry.

[cantab]

Yeah, mass budget seems like the big one. I also think there's limited need. We have various instruments to determine surface composition without needing to hit it with a missile.

[Exploro]

On 3/15/2016 at 1:53 PM, fredinno said:

Pluto was known to have an atmosphere before NH, so any probe WOULD have heat shields for reentry.

I still don't think so. Consider that the surface of Pluto the pressure is 1 bar. That corresponds to pressures at around 100 km above Earth's surface; at this altitude objects like spacecraft or meteors being experiencing entry effects. In other words, the impactor would crash into the surface of Pluto by the time it would begin to experience entry effects.

[Findthepin1]

18 hours ago, Exploro said:

I still don't think so. Consider that the surface of Pluto the pressure is 1 bar. That corresponds to pressures at around 100 km above Earth's surface; at this altitude objects like spacecraft or meteors being experiencing entry effects. In other words, the impactor would crash into the surface of Pluto by the time it would begin to experience entry effects.

That's 1 pascal. 1 bar corresponds to pressures 0.11925 km above Earth's surface, i.e. a couple hundred feet.

[p1t1o]

On 3/14/2016 at 11:01 PM, omelaw said:

Would it deal too much damage to pluto?

[Exploro]

9 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

That's 1 pascal. 1 bar corresponds to pressures 0.11925 km above Earth's surface, i.e. a couple hundred feet.

Oops. I typed the wrong unit. Pascals was what I meant to state.

Edited March 19, 2016 by Exploro