New Horizons

[Green Baron]

That's so far out, i find it spooky.

Do we know the relative speed at the encounter ?

 

[cubinator]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

That's so far out, i find it spooky.

It's over 1 AU from the object!

Quote

Do we know the relative speed at the encounter ?

 

Probably similar to the speed at Pluto.

It looks kind of elongated even in that blurry picture! I'm excited to find out if it's a binary or other oddball shape!

Edited August 29, 2018 by cubinator

[Adstri]

Can't wait! Not much longer 'till we get to see the furthest object visited by a space probe.

It's kind of weird how New Horizons is visiting two binary objects.

[insert_name]

Another TCM, most distant manuver ever counducted

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-horizons-year-flyby-ultima-thule.html

[tater]

 

[cubinator]

Very exciting!

[Ty Tan Tu]

On 8/28/2018 at 1:32 PM, Green Baron said:

Do we know the relative speed at the encounter ?

50,700 kilometers per hour.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20181218

"After almost three weeks of sensitive searches for rings, small moons and other potential hazards around the object, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern gave the "all clear" for the spacecraft to remain on a path that takes it about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from Ultima, instead of a hazard-avoiding detour that would have pushed it three times farther out. With New Horizons blazing though space at some 31,500 miles (50,700 kilometers) per hour, a particle as small as a grain of rice could be lethal to the piano-sized probe."

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

It has begun!

 

[DAL59]

have they found a post- UT target?

[MaverickSawyer]

4 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

have they found a post- UT target?

If it were up to me, I'd wait until after I get confirmation of having survived the upcoming encounter before making any serious plans for further investigations.

Also, I'm not sure they'd be able to spot anything both large enough to be of interest and along the path of NH...

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

3 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Also, I'm not sure they'd be able to spot anything both large enough to be of interest and along the path of NH...

Hey, you never know... plenty of rocks out there. Since there probably wouldn't be a chance to encounter much else, I'd say that just about ANYTHING would be large and interesting enough. More data is more data! It's always great to make sure the mission lasts as long as possible.

 

That being said, you're right- that should wait until after the flyby.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Also, this:

 

[Adstri]

On ‎12‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 4:35 PM, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

Also, this:

 

Reminds me of the discovery images of Charon with the way it's bulging like that.

[YNM]

This is way too quiet for such a furthest object any man-made probe has passed !

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

This is way too quiet for such a furthest object any man-made probe has passed !

I'm trying to get excited but "Look it moves against the stars" isn't really enough for me.

I'll be watching on Monday for sure though.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

This is way too quiet for such a furthest object any man-made probe has passed !

‘Murricans are asleep. And I’m not talking about government shutdown.

[Xd the great]

On 12/19/2018 at 10:02 AM, Ty Tan Tu said:

a particle as small as a grain of rice could be lethal to the piano-sized probe."

How big of a potato?

[YNM]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

'Murricans are asleep.

Deal with it, it'll happen right 33 mins after the year changes XD (and conveniently in lunchtime for me !)

[Piscator]

So . . . while there's still the chance to speculate, does anyone want to hazard a guess about the apparent absence of a lightcurve despite stellar occultation data suggesting an non-spherical shape for UT?

[Green Baron]

It does not rotate (or only very slowly) or its pole is pointed towards New Horizons ?

[RealKerbal3x]

The hype builds! Does anyone know of the exact time that New Horizons will pass by Ultima Thule?

[Green Baron]

Nasa has an event calender:

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

 

The time is estimated to 05:33 UTC.

[Laie]

"One important caveat: the times reported above are when the images will be downlinked. This is not the same as when they will be published." (Source: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2018/what-to-expect-new-horizons-mu69-ultima-thule.html)

True high-resolution images will take much longer to arrive, several weeks to a few months. If you backtrack in this thread, you can see how things played out after the Pluto flyby. This time around, the data rate will be lower still, so things can be expected to take even longer.

[tater]

 

 

[Aethon]

Hey all.

When NH flew by Pluto/ Xaron, there was a NASA eyes on the solar system thing that you could watch realtime as the flyby was happening.  I halfheartedly looked back through the thread to see if I could find it.  Does anybody have any idea how to make that go again?  I remember it really made the flyby fun.  

Thanks