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New Horizons

r4pt0r

By r4pt0r
in Science & Spaceflight

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notsosmart

notsosmart

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Posted

They've been gathering info for several weeks now.

Scientists are currently taking data with the plasma instruments to characterize the solar wind at these distances and the dust detector to learn about the concentration of dust particles in this part of space. They will be doing some calibration and test observations with the UV spectrometer (Alice) and in late January New Horizons will begin another series of optical navigation images using the LORRI instrument, a black and white high resolution camera (the first optical navigation campaign was last summer). The team is preparing with detailed planning including operational readiness tests and building science tools to analyze the data they will receive.

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105744-New-Horizons-Pluto-Encounter-Thread

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Nikolai

Nikolai

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When I get home, I intend to do the integration to determine the "effective" length of a path tangent to the planet's surface, assuming the atmosphere starts at 100km (giving you a path of 960 km) - ie what path lenght along the surface that corresponds to.

You don't need to integrate to get close to that. It's pretty much a straight line; the Pythagorean theorem is sufficiently "close".

At any rate, its clear that its simply not possible to aerobrake that probe at Pluto

Yeah. Once I realized the density was only about 3% of the value I plugged in, I realized the cascading problems it would present.

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KerikBalm

KerikBalm

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You don't need to integrate to get close to that. It's pretty much a straight line; the Pythagorean theorem is sufficiently "close".

Yes, for the distance, but the drag at 20km altitude only produces 1/e as much drag as at the surface, assuming a 20km scale height.

So a ~1000km line going from 100km altitude, to zero, to 100km again is equivalent to a much smaller distance going through atmosphere are ground level.

That was the integration I planned on doing, but as we've already seen... its a long way off, so I don't need to do additional calculations to show its even less feasible

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Nikolai

Nikolai

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Yes, for the distance, but the drag at 20km altitude only produces 1/e as much drag as at the surface, assuming a 20km scale height.

So a ~1000km line going from 100km altitude, to zero, to 100km again is equivalent to a much smaller distance going through atmosphere are ground level.

Yeah. And you know why? Because an atmosphere that goes through orders of magnitude in density and pressure is also going to have its behavior change by orders of magnitude. Which should have been obvious to me at the outset. Thanks for setting me straight. And apologies, everyone, for being borderline belligerent.

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KerikBalm

KerikBalm

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I've been off by orders of magntidue before.... I was arguing in a space warfare thread about current FEL lasers, and how feasible a long range laser canon would be.

I was citing a laser already in use on a size that wasn't so ridiculous... but the pulse energy was in mJ (millijoules) not MJ (MegaJoules).... which obviously threw off the size of the laser needed to be capable of the things I was talking about.

My calculations were so good though, if I just started with that laser output in megajoules, not millijoules....

Just like aerobraking at Pluto would be viable if its atmospheric density were 0.3 kg/m^3, instead of an atmosphere of 0.3 Pascals with a density of about 0.0000243 kg/m^3.

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PakledHostage

PakledHostage

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who cares about that rock.

What kind of question is that? Lots of people might ask "who cares about Venus?" while you obviously care a lot about it. You may not understand their differing interests from your own, but they have just as much right to them as you do to yours.

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notsosmart

notsosmart

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who cares about that rock.

LOL, what a jerk. I mean, why are you here if you don't care about space exploration? Exploring a new (sort of) planet is as exciting as space exploration can get.

Edited by notsosmart
Ooops, typo
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notsosmart

notsosmart

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No need to call people names.

I guess you're referring to me... so yes, I'm sorry to have said that, but again, he was kinda looking for it :P

What will be the naming scheme for the geography of Pluto?

I'm not sure whether IAU rules apply to surface features, but thinking of how Mercury's craters are all named after musicians/poets/artists, I guess they do apply. So I'd go for something mythological related to the world of the dead or afterlife.

- - - Updated - - -

I suppose stuff related to the mythological world of dead.

There I go, Ninja'd.... And yes, it took me a while to write that reply

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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

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Nah, they's probably go with Disney names, since that's what most of the general public would associate with Pluto: Mickey, Minnie, Donald, etc. They'll probably name the oddest feature Goofy. Since Disney now owns the Star Wars franchise, there may be some names from there too. Maybe they'll find a small moon and name it the Death Star ("that's no moon...")

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Greenfire32

Greenfire32

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Nah, they's probably go with Disney names, since that's what most of the general public would associate with Pluto

I don't know though. Disney (and Star Wars) names wouldn't exactly fit in with the Greek/Roman theme we have so far. I mean, eventually we'll have to leave the Greek/Roman influences, but I doubt our home solar system will contain the first of the "New Age" names.

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78stonewobble

78stonewobble

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Nah, they's probably go with Disney names, since that's what most of the general public would associate with Pluto: Mickey, Minnie, Donald, etc. They'll probably name the oddest feature Goofy. Since Disney now owns the Star Wars franchise, there may be some names from there too. Maybe they'll find a small moon and name it the Death Star ("that's no moon...")

It might not fit, but I like it... *lol* ...

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