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Beware the Rings of Pluto
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that scientists are planning a new route for NASA's New Horizons space probe as it approaches a potentially perilous path toward Pluto through a possible set of rings that may create dangerous debris zones for the NASA spacecraft. New Horizons is currently about 1,000 days away and 730 million miles from closest approach to Pluto but given that New Horizons is currently zooming away from the sun at more than 33,500 mph, 'a collision with a single pebble, or even a millimeter-sized grain, could cripple or destroy New Horizons,' says project scientist Hal Weaver. 'We need to steer clear of any debris zones around Pluto.' Researchers are making plans to avoid these hazards if New Horizons needs to. 'We are now exploring nine other options, "bail-out trajectories,"' says principal investigator Alan Stern. New Horizon's current plan would take it about halfway between Pluto and the orbit of its largest moon, Charon. Four of the bail-out trajectories would still take the spacecraft between Pluto and Charon's orbit. The other alternatives would take New Horizons much further away from Pluto, past the orbits of its known moons. 'If you fly twice as far away, your camera does half as well; if it's 10 times as far, it does one-tenth as well,' says Stern. 'Still, half a loaf is better than no loaf. Sending New Horizons on a suicide mission does no one any good. We're very much of the mind to accomplish as much as we can, and not losing it all recklessly. Better to turn an A+ to an A- than get an F by overreaching.'"
And it'll mess right back with you.
still have a moon?
Potentially perilous Pluto path? Perfectly petrifyingly perigee perturbation!
when I was young, only planets were allowed to have rings!
I thought if you fly twice as far, your camera will work 1/4 as well, not 1/2.
Downgrade ME from a planet, will ya? Say, that's a nice little toy you've got flying out near me. Shame if some part of me crashed into it, you know?
To Boldly Plot Nine Bail-Out Trajectories That No Man Has Plotted Before.
Tholen is that you?
I blame Neil Degrasse Tyson for all this.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Now even our spacecraft are getting bailouts!
Soviet Cosmonauts were the first to explore Pluto's rings during Project Manifesto, otherwise codenamed "Goulash".
http://kremlin.ru
Damn right. I hear they are pretty pissed about the whole "planet" thing.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
they decided it was a planetoid because it couldn't clear its orbit of debris (orbit around the sun), but its still big enough to attract material to orbit it (hence moons and rings). The only reason Earth doesn't have rings is that it is relatively small and all of the material in orbit around it was pulled into the gravity well of our freakishly large moon.
that picture scarred me for like, why didn't its camera work worse
Could someone PLEASE explain this with another analogy?
I always thought I had to worry about the rings around Uranus!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Even Pluto is married this days. Maybe we should nuke the moon to have a respectable ring around our planet, won't be a signal of intelligent life here (at least, not intelligent enough) but at least will be noticed by eventual visitors from outside.
I thought all christians believed the earth was flat, the earth is the center of the solar system and the universe ended at the barrier around our solar system..
So since most of the cost in any given NASA science project is in the hardware research and engineering not the construction, neither launch nor operation side why they hell aren't they making use of economies of scale? Stop building only one of something (well technically two, the "on earth version" and the "mission" version). Spread the risk out by flying in multiples. It would be unfortunate if one of them hits a "pebble" but the science returned would be magnitudes better because they're able to take advantage of opportunities that wouldn't be possible due to risk aversion. Take it a step further and make use of the same hardware R&D for multiple missions. Engineer a few platforms that are robust, and reasonably customizable. Each platform with a particular type of mission in mind. Put a Curiosity on Europa, Titan, and/or Ariel. Get an MRO around Ganymede, etc.. You don't need 7 minutes of terror if the hardware you spent more than $2B developing has already been flown and proven on other missions. You wouldn't be (as) scared to death that Congress will cut your funds because you're making good, efficient use of the R&D money. "Yes senator, that $2B from Congress has given us a platform we've reused on 10 missions now."
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
From TFA:
"RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take or quiz."
I'll settle for just being literate.
'If you fly twice as far away, your camera does half as well; if it's 10 times as far, it does one-tenth as well,' says Stern.
I was always taught that with optics it is the square of the distance, so twice as far away is 1/4 as well and 10 times further is 100th as well. But then, maybe when the changed the science that said Pluto wasn't a planet, it changed the physics, too.
Send the craft on a close approach, count on likelihood it will get most of the closer-up pictures on approach first and then maybe get destroyed. so what if it is destroyed while leaving?
Well, damn, if you want a full load just fly by Uranus.
Watch for rings there, too.
IANAA* but from a layman's perspective, I'd rather zoom in and see what we can of Pluto even if we're taking a chance on destruction, than increase the chance this is a half-and-half mission. (I don't want another major mission aimed at Pluto - there are other things to look at out there.)
* Astrophysicist
You don't really get much improvement in per-unit cost by building 10 of something vs 2. The biggest factor in the cost even with just the first couple isn't the engineering but the testing and qualification. Most of that has to be repeated for every unit you build until you are creating enough to have confidence in the past performance and to fall back to statistical testing, or at least are building enough for automating that work to be economical. But you would need to be creating several dozen of them for that to kick in. Furthermore, construction is more expensive that you are allowing for at those low quantities since it's all is done by hand, by highly skilled labor. That won't drop by much until you get into mass-manufacturing quantities, hundreds at least.
So you would get minor savings, and at the loss of a huge amount of science. There is a reason that each of these probes is wildly different, and that is because the have wildly varying requirements. There is no one-size fits all suite of sensors. They will want different spectral ranges, different optics setups (detailed, narrow FOV vs wide coverage), different transmitter requirements (Horizon has much farther to transmit than MRO), all of which drives different battery requirements.
Finally, the point of science is to keep learning; to keep pushing things forward. You do that by sending probes with improved and/or different capabilities, not just more of the same. Sure we could have sent 3 more MERs (Spirit/Opportunity) for the cost of Curiosity, but we wouldn't have learned as much as Curiosity will be able to tell us.
The imager can see 12th magnitude stars. It has both high resolution and high sensitivity, but no moving parts. A decade ago it was state of the art stuff. But physics is still physics. At twice the radius, a pixel will get one fourth the light flux, so will need four times longer exposure. That means four times fewer images. However, doubling the CPA also means half the slew rate, so it may not be so bad.
The original article: http://www.space.com/18087-pluto-moons-rings-risk-new-horizons.html
The craft: http://www.space.com/1800-horizons-voyage-edge-solar-system.html
The telescope (LORRI): http://www.universetoday.com/566/new-horizons-telescope-sees-first-light/
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
For being demoted from its planet status. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I think my transfer expired.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I was part of the Huygens european team in the Cassini/Huygens mission to Titan.
On the US Cassini orbiter, there was a microphone, which was turned on when Cassini went to flyby Saturn, passing in the clear between two rings.
The craft had been reoriented at that moment to get the large high-gain antenna facing speed, so as to protect everything between, and because of this the key crossing moment happened without Earth contact --only afterwards was it due to reorient back to Earth and tell us whatever happened.
Well we definitely did record sand/dust impacts with the mic, and I can tell you, even 'a posteriori' it was quite frightening to listen...
Herve S.
'If you fly twice as far away, your camera does half as well; if it's 10 times as far, it does one-tenth as well,' says Stern
Surely "twice as far away" = "a quarter as well", and "10 times as far" = "one-hundredth as well"...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'