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NASA probe believed to have passed distant space rock on landmark mission


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NASA probe believed to have passed distant space rock on landmark mission  

By Joey Roulette

 

2019-01-01T184552Z_1_LYNXNPEF0015M_RTROPTP_4_SPACE-NEW-HORIZONS.JPG

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), left, gives a high five to New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory after the team received signals from the flyby of Ultima Thule by the New Horizons spacecraft that it is healthy and collected data, at the Mission Operations Center of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, U.S., January 1, 2019. NASA/Bill Ingalls/Handout via REUTERS

 

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - A NASA explorer is believed to have reached the solar system's outermost region early Tuesday morning, flying close to a space rock 20 miles long and billions of miles from Earth on a mission to gather clues about the creation of the solar system.

 

The body is farther from Earth than any other that has had such a close encounter with a NASA probe, scientists believe.

 

The New Horizons probe was slated to reach the "third zone" in the uncharted heart of the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 a.m. Eastern.

 

Scientists will not have confirmation of its successful arrival until the probe communicates its whereabouts through NASA's Deep Space Network at 10:28 a.m. Eastern, about 10 hours later. 

 

Once it enters the peripheral layer of the belt, containing icy bodies and leftover fragments from the solar system's creation, the probe will get its first close-up glance of Ultima Thule, a cool mass shaped like a giant peanut, using seven on-board instruments.

 

Scientists had not discovered Ultima Thule when the probe was launched, according to NASA, making the mission unique in that respect. In 2014, astronomers found Thule using the Hubble Space Telescope and selected it for New Horizon's extended mission in 2015. 

 

"Anything's possible out there in this very unknown region," John Spencer, deputy project scientist for New Horizons, told reporters on Monday at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. 

 

Launched in January 2006, New Horizons embarked on a 4 billion mile journey toward the solar system's frigid edge to study the dwarf planet Pluto and its five moons.

 

During a 2015 fly-by, the probe found Pluto to be slightly larger than previously thought. In March, it revealed that methane-rich dunes were on the icy dwarf planet's surface.

 

After trekking 1 billion miles beyond Pluto into the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons will now seek clues about the formation of the solar system and its planets.

 

As the probe flies 2,200 miles (3,500 km) above Thule's surface, scientists hope it will detect the chemical composition of its atmosphere and terrain in what NASA says will be the closest observation of a body so remote. 

 

"We are straining the capabilities of this spacecraft, and by tomorrow we'll know how we did," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said during the news conference at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. "There are no second chances for New Horizons."

 

While the mission marks the farthest close-encounter of an object within our solar system, NASA's Voyager 1 and 2, a pair of deep space probes launched in 1977, have reached greater distances on a mission to survey extrasolar bodies. Both probes are still operational.

 

(Editing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Stephen Coates)

 
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-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-01-02
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1 hour ago, webfact said:

In 2014, astronomers found Thule using the Hubble Space Telescope

One of my assignments in journalism class years ago, was to interview some guy called Story Musgrave. He was at the university to give a talk about NASA and space. When I tracked him down on campus he wasn't much into chit-chat. He handed me his press release and photo and said thank you. 

 

However, his talk to the audience was much longer and truly fascinating. He never graduated high school but ended up with seven degrees in stuff like Math, Chemistry, Medicine, Biophysics and Computer Programming. I was struggling with one degree.

 

When he explained about being one of the astronauts sent to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, the details went way over my head. But, I did wonder about his head though. He had over 100 experimental free-fall descents involved with the study of human aerodynamics.

 

A really smart guy. But, I doubt that he remembers me...

 

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So scientists are doing THIS and still some people do not believe in science?!

Like anti-vaccers, climate change deniers, creationists, flat earthers...

Because reasons and government conspiracy!?

Yeah...right! 

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2 hours ago, DM07 said:

So scientists are doing THIS and still some people do not believe in science?!

Like anti-vaccers, climate change deniers, creationists, flat earthers...

Because reasons and government conspiracy!?

Yeah...right! 

So you believe Government paid scientists do you? It's no conspiracy, it's a fact, they lie. Do some ego free research into these topics and you may be surprised, but you probably won't as it's easier to believe a lie. We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth. 

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6 hours ago, missoura said:

One of my assignments in journalism class years ago, was to interview some guy called Story Musgrave. He was at the university to give a talk about NASA and space. When I tracked him down on campus he wasn't much into chit-chat. He handed me his press release and photo and said thank you. 

 

However, his talk to the audience was much longer and truly fascinating. He never graduated high school but ended up with seven degrees in stuff like Math, Chemistry, Medicine, Biophysics and Computer Programming. I was struggling with one degree.

 

When he explained about being one of the astronauts sent to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, the details went way over my head. But, I did wonder about his head though. He had over 100 experimental free-fall descents involved with the study of human aerodynamics.

 

A really smart guy. But, I doubt that he remembers me...

 

He doesn't sound like a people person. 

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32 minutes ago, sevenhills said:

So you believe Government paid scientists do you? It's no conspiracy, it's a fact, they lie. Do some ego free research into these topics and you may be surprised, but you probably won't as it's easier to believe a lie. We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth. 

One question: Which government? USA, Europeans, China, Russia, India or all of them, working in one great conspiracy?

 

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7 minutes ago, oilinki said:

One question: Which government? USA, Europeans, China, Russia, India or all of them, working in one great conspiracy?

 

Only the Western governments (now essentially one world order), as we can't understand Chinese, Russian, or Urdu.

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So far all the data and photos published regarding other planets, moons, comets and asteroids taken by these unmanned missions in our solar system, I have not found to be very impressive. Mostly rock, sand, gas, ice and nothing I could say is really interesting and exciting.

 

I can`t see how this present mission to study a piece of rock billions of miles away from Earth is worth the expense or how this will benefit mankind and science? Literally, seen one asteroid, seen them all.

 

After over 50 years of space exploration and trillions of dollars later, we have not come even one step closer to discovering lifeforms either in our solar system or beyond. 

 

 

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Here is a bit of discussion of the mission as well as how the suitable small object was found from quite luminous part of the sky (the centre of Milky way is on background). 

 

 

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2 hours ago, cyberfarang said:

So far all the data and photos published regarding other planets, moons, comets and asteroids taken by these unmanned missions in our solar system, I have not found to be very impressive. Mostly rock, sand, gas, ice and nothing I could say is really interesting and exciting.

 

I can`t see how this present mission to study a piece of rock billions of miles away from Earth is worth the expense or how this will benefit mankind and science? Literally, seen one asteroid, seen them all.

 

After over 50 years of space exploration and trillions of dollars later, we have not come even one step closer to discovering lifeforms either in our solar system or beyond. 

 

 

We can't co- habitat with the lifeforms here!  Finding another world with intelligent lifeforms will only lead to universal power struggle and ultimately destruction!  I'm all for exploring how the universe started

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The level of ignorance posted on these pages absolutely astounds me. Go back to the children's channel and leave the intelligent world alone. As any of these rocks come within a couple thousand miles of your back yard, it will be too late to check up on space matters. Meanwhile, Thai channel 33 will get you all the kiddie stuff you can handle.

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7 hours ago, DM07 said:

So scientists are doing THIS and still some people do not believe in science?!

Like anti-vaccers, climate change deniers, creationists, flat earthers...

Because reasons and government conspiracy!?

Yeah...right! 

 

5 hours ago, sevenhills said:

So you believe Government paid scientists do you? It's no conspiracy, it's a fact, they lie. Do some ego free research into these topics and you may be surprised, but you probably won't as it's easier to believe a lie. We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth. 

 

Amen, Brother sevenhills!  I’m right there with you.  Let’s catalog the never-ending abominable scientific lies we are fed daily: 

 

They insist on the dogma that we live on a Spherical Earth!  The bloody idiots!  I can personally vouch that I sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 17 days in 1970 as a US Marine returning from Vietnam.  At no time during our voyage did we sail UP from Da Nang to California, as a round Earth would demand.  (Look at a “globe”!)  For us it was flat sailing all the way across.  Duh! 

 

Government scientists say folks should be vaccinated for the health and safety of them and their communities, and that it is not dangerous.  But what are the facts?  I grew up in a relatively normal nut job fundamentalist church.  My family neglected to baptize me.  Yet here I am nearing 70-years-old while I’m still un-baptized and quite healthy, while numerous friends and contemporaries of mine who had been baptized have died much, much younger. 

 

Evolution?  Bah!  Humbug!  I grew up with solid documentation in our daily newspapers that humans coexisted with dinosaurs, with no long geologic ages with extinctions separating species in time.  An ancient dude named Alley Oop rode his faithful dinosaur steed, Dinny, around all the time.  And television also confirmed such facts – guys like Fred and Barney. 

 

I will admit I don’t know much about climate change.  I live in Thailand, and it’s just hotter than the blazes of Hell, ALL the time. 

 

Only one thing in your post, sevenhills, puzzles me.  You write that:  “We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth.”  I think that “berth” and “berthing” are nautical terms, thus I am not quite sure how you are meaning them here.  I was only berthed when on the ship across the Pacific at age 20.  All I did was read Poe and Conan Doyle.  Was I brainwashed?  Please enlighten me. 

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6 hours ago, zydeco said:

Very interesting topic turning into a referendum on nut stuff.

Imagine, Volta and all others had to win a referendum fo their experiments with electricity…. we still now would not know anything about that.

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15 hours ago, missoura said:

One of my assignments in journalism class years ago, was to interview some guy called Story Musgrave. He was at the university to give a talk about NASA and space. When I tracked him down on campus he wasn't much into chit-chat. He handed me his press release and photo and said thank you. 

 

However, his talk to the audience was much longer and truly fascinating. He never graduated high school but ended up with seven degrees in stuff like Math, Chemistry, Medicine, Biophysics and Computer Programming. I was struggling with one degree.

 

When he explained about being one of the astronauts sent to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, the details went way over my head. But, I did wonder about his head though. He had over 100 experimental free-fall descents involved with the study of human aerodynamics.

 

A really smart guy. But, I doubt that he remembers me...

 

Oh ! OK.

Now  I am a little curious  about  your  head.

Not that you  will remember  me  .

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4 hours ago, puipuitom said:

Imagine, Volta and all others had to win a referendum fo their experiments with electricity…. we still now would not know anything about that.

 

You mean like Edison did when he tried to bury Tesla and his A/C power grid in favor of Edison's inferior D/C distribution plan?

 

And the 7 dwarfs did for decades to bury the science that said that smoking is addictive?

 

There's good science, there's junk science, and there are outright lies.   We get fed all 3.  It's good that scientists have to prove their science, especially when new information pops up and shows that someone famous was wrong decades ago, and we've built an entire genre of science on a bad foundation.

 

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5 hours ago, impulse said:

 

You mean like Edison did when he tried to bury Tesla and his A/C power grid in favor of Edison's inferior D/C distribution plan?

 

And the 7 dwarfs did for decades to bury the science that said that smoking is addictive?

 

There's good science, there's junk science, and there are outright lies.   We get fed all 3.  It's good that scientists have to prove their science, especially when new information pops up and shows that someone famous was wrong decades ago, and we've built an entire genre of science on a bad foundation.

 

That's what parts "science" from "fundamentalism"!

It evolves!

It is not too proud to say "Oh look at that...seems we were wrong!"

It can be demonstrated and experiments can be repeated, showing the same results over and over!

Where as flat- earthers can't even decide on one-fits-all model of the flat earth and creationists always go "It is so, because a 2000 year old book teld me so!"

 

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17 hours ago, sevenhills said:

So you believe Government paid scientists do you? It's no conspiracy, it's a fact, they lie. Do some ego free research into these topics and you may be surprised, but you probably won't as it's easier to believe a lie. We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth. 

So does the new tinfoil hat fit ok ?

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So far all the data and photos published regarding other planets, moons, comets and asteroids taken by these unmanned missions in our solar system, I have not found to be very impressive. Mostly rock, sand, gas, ice and nothing I could say is really interesting and exciting.

 

I can`t see how this present mission to study a piece of rock billions of miles away from Earth is worth the expense or how this will benefit mankind and science? Literally, seen one asteroid, seen them all.

 

After over 50 years of space exploration and trillions of dollars later, we have not come even one step closer to discovering lifeforms either in our solar system or beyond. 

 

 

Yes but they have found us,they are seen visiting us all the time,mind you they dont seem to make a big deal out of it,just get seen by the usual aray of people but never make a big deal about it and contact our govts,strange that. But then unlike us its no big deal to all our visiting aliens to them its nothing to travel billions of miles ,fly around and then go home.

 

Sent from my SM-A720F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

 

 

 

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On 1/2/2019 at 3:34 AM, sevenhills said:

So you believe Government paid scientists do you? It's no conspiracy, it's a fact, they lie. Do some ego free research into these topics and you may be surprised, but you probably won't as it's easier to believe a lie. We have been brainwashed and programmed by the system since berth. 

 

On 1/2/2019 at 4:41 AM, cyberfarang said:

So far all the data and photos published regarding other planets, moons, comets and asteroids taken by these unmanned missions in our solar system, I have not found to be very impressive. Mostly rock, sand, gas, ice and nothing I could say is really interesting and exciting.

 

I can`t see how this present mission to study a piece of rock billions of miles away from Earth is worth the expense or how this will benefit mankind and science? Literally, seen one asteroid, seen them all.

 

After over 50 years of space exploration and trillions of dollars later, we have not come even one step closer to discovering lifeforms either in our solar system or beyond. 

 

 

555 Wow! You jokesters and baitsters are hitting on all cylinders (the 1 shared between ya both!) on this thread. Thanks for the LOL's. Gave me a nasal enema and spattered Cheers Beer all over my new tablet...TWICE! Totally worth it! The insane (non)sense of humor is hysterically amusing! Please keep up the mirth making!!! Nothing like a BIG :cheesy: :clap2:

 

(p.s. prob should have included "Impulse" in on this too)

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There are few things which is good to think when seeing a distant object like Ultimate Thule, out there 47 times the distance of the Sun is from us.

 

1) Why the surface of the object seems to be so smooth. Are most objects on the same distance traveling mostly at the same speed and towards the same direction?

 

That sounds logical, given that our Solar system is formed from a cloud of matter which started to spin and slowly form the Sun and the planets around it. 

 

2) The distance is huge. It takes 6 hours for the signal to come from Ultima Thule to the Earth. This basically makes understanding space-time a lot easier. Different places in space have their own timestamps. Everything we see in distance happened in the past when we observe the events. 

 

3) How the photo was taken? There is very, very little sunlight that far out in the space. While both the New Horizons spacecraft and the little Snowman rock are both moving fast compared to each other, what were the camera settings used to take the photos of the object? How long it took to take the photo? Was is seconds, minutes, hours? What kind of sensors and lenses were used?

 

DwAAwRUX4AAdx58.jpg.091a017c34ae19b20a25f3bd98a8a727.jpg

 

 

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On 1/1/2019 at 6:35 PM, missoura said:

When I tracked him down on campus he wasn't much into chit-chat. He handed me his press release and photo and said thank you. 

 

However, his talk to the audience was much longer and truly fascinating.

 

I take this as great compliment to him.  From people I know in the sciences the clash of egos in the upper echelons rival those "mean girls" high school movies. 

 

 

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It’s really cool to see this rock a gizillion miles from earth but I feel the treasure is much better spent closer to home the sea for instance we know little about it but it is way more accessible than deep space and can yeald results in real time

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36 minutes ago, Tug said:

It’s really cool to see this rock a gizillion miles from earth but I feel the treasure is much better spent closer to home the sea for instance we know little about it but it is way more accessible than deep space and can yeald results in real time

Doing the one thing, shouldn't mean not doing the other thing, me thinks!

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10 hours ago, oilinki said:

There are few things which is good to think when seeing a distant object like Ultimate Thule, out there 47 times the distance of the Sun is from us.

 

1) Why the surface of the object seems to be so smooth. Are most objects on the same distance traveling mostly at the same speed and towards the same direction?

 

That sounds logical, given that our Solar system is formed from a cloud of matter which started to spin and slowly form the Sun and the planets around it. 

 

2) The distance is huge. It takes 6 hours for the signal to come from Ultima Thule to the Earth. This basically makes understanding space-time a lot easier. Different places in space have their own timestamps. Everything we see in distance happened in the past when we observe the events. 

 

3) How the photo was taken? There is very, very little sunlight that far out in the space. While both the New Horizons spacecraft and the little Snowman rock are both moving fast compared to each other, what were the camera settings used to take the photos of the object? How long it took to take the photo? Was is seconds, minutes, hours? What kind of sensors and lenses were used?

 

DwAAwRUX4AAdx58.jpg.091a017c34ae19b20a25f3bd98a8a727.jpg

 

 

The New Horizons craft has two visible light cameras; a long range black and white one and a medium resolution colour one. The images can be combined, so medium resolution images can be used to colourise the higher resolution long range ones.  NASA used proven technology when the spacecraft was built, nothing cutting edge that might fail or have flaws (what's the point of travelling a billion miles for a holiday only to have your camera break when you get there?), so it's from about 15 years ago.  Although the light is only about 1/1000th that on Earth, these outer solar system objects reflect back about half the light that reaches them, making them relatively bright - in comparison, the moon only reflects between 3 and 12 percent of the light hitting it.  At the high speed New Horizons is travelling (32,000 miles/hour), a fast shutter speed is needed to reduce blurring.  The photos of Pluto were taken with a shutter speed of 1/10 second, aperture f12.6, and ISO number 6,200.  (A lot) more details are in this paper: http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-lorri.pdf

 

It has also only transmitted less than one percent of its data, it will take around 20 months to send the lot.  Must be using the TV servers.

 

Some of the other pictures taken during the flight:

Jupiter (edit: Not really this squashed, inserting it into the post has distorted it for some reason)

New Horizons Jupiter Io

 

Pluto

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in July 2015, it captured this image of the major mountain ranges where it meets a vast icy plain called Sputnik Planitia. The ridges in these photos have now been identified as dunes made of solid methane ice grains.

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