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New Horizons Probe's Images of Jupiter
SeaDour writes "The Pluto-bound New Horizons space probe, launched a little over a year ago, recently succeeded in passing through a narrow navigational keyhole by Jupiter. Using the gas giant's tremendous gravity, the craft now has a significant boost toward its final destination, shaving three years off the time it would otherwise spend en-route. As it passed through the Jovian system, the probe took some fantastic images of the neighborhood, including detailed observations of erupting volcanoes on Io, time-lapse photography of Jupiter's tumultuous atmosphere, and the faint ring system that was first discovered in Voyager photography. These new images prove the capabilities of the small probe, which is set to reach Pluto in 2015."
And as we all know, it is Jupiters orbital velocity that gives the spacecraft its speed boost, not Jupiter's gravitational field. See: here.
So... what do the scientists do while they're waiting for the darn thing to get there?
A watched-probe never gets to pluto.
No it does not run Linux.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Here you go:
{_@_}
Seriously? We launch a gajillion dollar probe, chance it in a sling around the largest planet in our solar system to only save 3 years, and we get black and white photos that have more noise than my cell-phone's camera!?
This is how the first computers looked like. And this is how their "hard drives" looked like.
It was expensive as hell, and the returns were minimal. They dared to do it first, and to improve upon their experience, so today the neighbor kid can whine how he has to wait entire 7 seconds for his physically accurate and photo realistic 3D racing car simulator game to load the entire race track, complete with realistically behaving crowd, plants and atmospheric effects.
NASA reached Pluto with a remotely controlled probe deep in space. You ranted in Slashdot. Congratulations to both for your great achievements.
I was actually looking forward to seeing what comes back from the probe. But I hear Pluto is a dwarf planet...the pictures probably won't show much, since dwarves live underground.
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
Remember, once upon a time, when space was exciting & people wanted to learn about it, and send people there, and get some rocks back?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Nice attempt at a rant/trolling, but maybe you don't know what you're talking about.
Do these probes that are sent out towards pluto and further face any real dangers when passing through the asteroid field that exists between Mars and Jupiter? I haven't heard much concerning this before and Starwars would have me believe that the chance of successfully navigating an asteroid field is 1 in 43 million.
It was launched last year. If my $450 cellphone can have a color camera with decent resolution, so can this gajillion dollar probe. (Excuse me, it was only $650 million. Yeah, definitely couldn't have afforded a color camera.)
If this probe had been launched a decade ago, I'd have thought nothing of a B&W camera with shitty pics. But last year? Give me a freaking break.
And yes, I'm fully aware of what the original computers looked like. We passed that stage LONG ago for computers, rockets, and cameras.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
From the JPL website:
"This is the last of a handful of LORRI images that New Horizons is sending "home" during its busy close encounter with Jupiter - hundreds of images and other data are being taken and stored onboard. The rest of the images will be returned to Earth over the coming weeks and months as the spacecraft speeds along to Pluto."
Wait some time for the high-res...they're more interested in making sure the thing works above all else.
Did anyone else spot the mushroom cloud at "9 o'clock?"
Whoop-de-do, slingshotting around Jupiter. They could have shaved a lot more time off the trip by slingshotting around the sun. :)
But that method is usually only reserved for Starfleet emergencies.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I think GP was ranting about the lack of entertainment value.
Interesting info though, thanks. Someone mod parent up.
I always thought of New Horizons as an outer system probe. But with all that lag time, I should have realized..
(wait for it)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I hope they have some or will have some.
I was looking around the many NASA pages and discovered that there are a LOT of 3D stereoscopic images online from Mars, the new Solar STEREO twin satellites, etc.. I found so much stuff that I decided to order a professional grade pair of 3D glasses for viewing it.
Believe it or not the goal of these missions is to gather scientific data, not provide you with a pretty screen saver ;-)
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Ralph: A Visible/Infrared Imager for the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt Mission
"MVIC is composed of 7 independent CCD arrays on a single substrate. It uses two of its large format (5024x32 pixel)
CCD arrays, operated in time delay integration (TDI) mode, to provide panchromatic (400 to 975 nm) images. Four
additional 5024x32 CCDs, combined with the appropriate filters and also operated in TDI mode, provide the capability
of mapping in blue (400-550 nm), red (540-700 nm), near IR (780-975 nm) and narrow band methane (860-910 nm)
channels."
You did know that cameras like this take colour shots by merging multiple exposures with different filters applied, right? They're probably using their limited bandwidth to retrieve single exposures from each shot to get a quicker overview of what they've got.
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Go build your shitty cell phone camera, from scratch, with the above restrictions, and get back to us on the cost.
Man... I guess that all of these scientists are really dumb and they should start taking your opinion seriously... right?
You do not launch a god dam cell phone camera on a billion dollar mission and hope to hell that it works.
Do you have any idea at all what it costs to qualify flight hardware?
Take your cost, no matter what it is, and add a couple of million to it. That is at best a starting point. That includes the fact that your cell phone would not work in a high radiation environment. The CCD would be blasted by the radiation environment.
Remember that the launch cost alone is outrageous. The instrument costs are a very small part of the total cost of the mission. A typical instrument costs around 15 million. That includes the design, development, construction, qualification, and scientific analysis of the data.
Before you pass judgment on what is and is not acceptable, please acknowledge that you are not qualified to pass such judgment.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
From your wikipedia link it also states: A Hohmann transfer orbit will take a spacecraft from low Earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) in just over five hours (geostationary transfer orbit), from LEO to the Moon in about 5 days and from the Earth to Mars in about 260 days. However, Hohmann transfers are very slow for trips to more distant points, so when visiting the outer planets it is common to use a gravitational slingshot to increase speed in-flight. Last time I checked, Pluto was an outer planet (dwarf).
"Seriously? We launch a gajillion dollar probe, chance it in a sling around the largest planet in our solar system to only save 3 years"
a) slightshots are a pretty well tested maneuver
b) it provides additional observations that are valuable in themselves, eg features on Io that have changed since Galileo last observed them.
c) 3 years gives us a chance to study Pluto's atmosphere before it freezes out as Pluto moves away from the sun.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
If Jupiter didn't exhibit a strong gravitational pull on the probe, it wouldn't be able to have a significant impact on the probe's orbital velocity.
If Jupiter were not moving w/r/t the sun and the probe, the probe's velocity w/r/t the sun would be no greater after the flyby than before.
The way I see it, both gravity and orbital velocity are necessary components of the gravitational slingshot, so it's fair to say that it's a combination of the two that give the spacecraft its speed boost.
b) it provides additional observations that are valuable in themselves, eg features on Io that have changed since Galileo last observed them.
c) 3 years gives us a chance to study Pluto's atmosphere before it freezes out as Pluto moves away from the sun. d) How would you get there faster, Mr. Smarty Pants? I'm sure the good folks at NASA would love for you to enlighten them. They definitely haven't thought carefully about efficient travel across the solar system...
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
Ding, ding, ding!
NASA (tag-teaming with fweeky): 1
Slashdot armchair cynic: 0
I don't suppose the GP has ever tried taking a picture of Jupiter with his fancy camera phone, either. He might find it a little blurry, very grainy, and surprisingly dark. Add in a little radiation and interference from moving through Jupiter's magnetic field and then transmit it 150 million miles, and layer on top of it spectrographic and radar data from the other instruments and you realize the OP's $450 (mass-produced price) cell phone with it's 3mm lens doesn't even count as a toy in comparison.
When you consider that the best images we have of Pluto currently (from the Hubble) are about 0.0005 megapixels of surface data and that New Horizons will pass a fraction of the distance from Pluto that it did from Jupiter, you begin to understand how much bang-for-the-buck this mission has to offer in understanding a body that may be one of the most numerous and least understood type of objects (KBO's) in our solar system.
http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.p l/
Agreed. Let's just see a pebble, or even an asteroid, in the same orbit do the same thing.
Table-ized A.I.
How long until there's pictures of Uranus?
Boys, you know what to do...
Table-ized A.I.
"(rocket fuel)."
I know this is proper and correct and all, but it just seems, looking at it; 'rocket fuel', so 1950s. Makes me want to dig out my Doc Smith paperbacks. Some day I'll look in the mirror and the fact that I'm over fifty will finally hit me. Won't be pretty...
I am hesitent to click any suspicious links regarding any probe going anywhere near that green planet that starts with a "U". I'll let somebody else test the link this time...
Table-ized A.I.
But I hear Pluto is a dwarf planet...the pictures probably won't show much, since dwarves live underground.
So do slashdotters.
Table-ized A.I.
The probe is already so popular that they formed a religion around it.
Table-ized A.I.
According to the article you cited:
"...Hohmann transfers are very slow for trips to more distant points, so when visiting the outer planets it is common to use a gravitational slingshot to increase speed in-flight."
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
wtf? I've always loved that poster, but where is there a misused apostrophe anywhere in the posting?
Er ... no. A Hohmann transfer is the slowest and most fuel-efficient orbit possible in the absence of a gravitational slingshot. If you can use a slingshot, you may be able to reduce your trip time or fuel consumption - or, possibly, both. Without a slingshot, you always have the option of using more fuel in order to make the trip faster than a Hohmann orbit (until, of course, you run out of fuel).
complete with realistically behaving crowd
Wow! They throw their beer cans at you? Anybody up in the stands flashing their titties for the camera?
plants
Roll up a fatty
and atmospheric effects.
It wasn't me, I swear.
Bah. The editors fixed the headline.
Congratulations. You have the distinction of being the only reply to my (apparently trollish) comment with any real information whatsoever. Everyone else just said, 'it costs a lot of money, duh!'
I was actually more worried about how grainy the images are than the color, and you are correct that I was worried about color because I thought it was important. Optics is obviously not my field because I never considered taking images from several wavelengths (I had completely ignored things outside the human-visible range) and using them individually, instead of combining the data all at once.
On the other hand, 'pretty pictures' are an essential part of this mission as well. The ignorant public (apparently including me) doesn't feel the immediate impact of the mission without them. If we want to keep sending gajillion dollar probes, the public needs to see immediate and long-term benefits both. Immediately meaning pretty pictures and preliminary analyses, and long-term meaning real-world applications for the knowledge gained. PR is an unfortunate necessity for any business, including the government.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Also, and perhaps most importantly, prior to use, it can be tested in an environment very similar to the one in which it will operate. For space probes - not so much. That's one reason why they are so very, very conservative.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
" At the time of the launch, Pluto was the only planet in the Earth's solar system that had not been visited by a spacecraft. However, seven months afterwards, Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet (per the official definition of the International Astronomical Union), leaving the solar system with only eight major planets. About two-thirds the size of the Earth's Moon, relatively little is known about distant Pluto when compared to closer neighbors of the Earth. "
So we start out for the only planet that WE discovered, and it turns out it's not a planet at all!
Incidentally, I regularly drive my car home and 'pass through a narrow navigational keyhole ' (my garage) every day. It's easy if you are allowed to make course corrections during the journey. Does someone think that probes are aimed from the earth? What gives with this idea that getting a self-steering robot to hit a target as big as a planet is difficult?
If you're going to criticize the cost of the mission, perhaps you should put a more informed number to it: $650 million over some 15 years.
Relax, that's only moderately expensive as interplanetary probes go. Cassini-Huygens will top out at around $3.5-4 billion over the whole mission. The wildly successful Mars Exploration Rovers, especially since their mission has been extended much longer than expected, are about $1 billion. Mariner 4, the first probe to do a flyby of Mars (a significantly less-sophisticated mission), was about $100 million in 1960s dollars. $650 million is about as much that's lost to graft, corruption, fraud, and bribes in Iraq each month.
Aside from the probes that we have lost outright, the probes that have reached their destination intact have yielded mountains of data and plenty of pretty pictures. There will be much more data coming back to earth from the flyby in the coming weeks. But keep in mind that, over the vast distances and relatively weak signal from New Horizons, the connection is fairly low-bandwidth. By the time of the Pluto flyby, you can expect that it will takes months or years to download the full dataset. So, please, have some patience.
Methinks you ought to read that article again. Hohmann transfers are minimum-energy orbits which take lots of time, but use the least amount of energy to get there.
Sheesh.
Your cell phone has a small lens (low light) and small CCD (susceptible to noise), and must take the shot in milliseconds, so it will be noisy for the same reasons.
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.