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New Horizons Captures First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
192_kbps writes: NASA published today the first color image of Pluto and Charon captured by the New Horizons probe, revealing a reddish world. "The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away - more than nine years and three billion miles - than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. Its flyby of Pluto and its system of at least five moons on July 14 will complete the initial reconnaissance of the classical solar system. This mission also opens the door to an entirely new "third" zone of mysterious small planets and planetary building blocks in the Kuiper Belt, a large area with numerous objects beyond Neptune's orbit." The picture is blurry, but far better than the few pixels Hubble can resolve, the image whets the appetite for New Horizon's closest approach on July 14th."
the photo is simply too blurry to be useful (to the avg person)
What use does the average person have for any photo of outer space objects? If its simply to whet the appetite for better cooler stuff to come then its done its job for you right? Me personally I always had an image of pluto being bluish gray from some artists conception I saw when i was 5 or so. To find out it may be red just blew my mind! (sorta) I'd say that was useful to me...of course it didn't make me any money so perhaps you're right after all.
It might be an ocean of liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen freezes at about -430F (around -260 C for foreigners), which sounds like it could be about in the ballpark.
If they knew the exact position, then just send the raw pixels for just the target area rather than an entire camera image. I'd guess the two bodies take up only about 25 x 25 pixels for that image. But I don't know the details of their compression and processing. I've read elsewhere that Pluto is roughly 5 pixels across at this time.
An interesting side fact is that they'll take a few good pre-encounter images and it will be the last images sent for roughly a month because the probe is not designed to transmit while aiming its instruments (to save money; contrast with Voyagers).
It will record everything during the fly-by for later playback. But, if it smashes into something orbiting near Pluto, the pre-encounter set may be the last images we get. Being it has at least 5 moons, there may be related debris orbiting.
Table-ized A.I.
Voyager has most of its instruments, including the cameras, on a movable platform. This allowed the positioning of the spacecraft and its high-gain antenna (the dish) to be decoupled from the positioning of the sensors. That made it very versatile and capable but, as you mentioned, more expensive. It also increases technical risk. What if the scanning platform jams up? (Some instruments could end up forever pointed back at the spacecraft! There are only so many multi-spectral selfies you would ever want to have.)
New Horzions is, for all intents and purposes, a single solid body. For 98% of its operational life, it's spin stabilized with its dish pointed squarely back towards Earth. That won't suffice for the intensive observations it was built for, so it will stop spinning and tilt itself this way and that to point its sensors at Pluto during its close encounter. Of course, when it is tilting this way and that, it is no longer pointing its main dish at Earth, so there can't be substantial communications. There is still the low-gain antenna, which is much less directional, which will allow for continuous commanding and telemetry, but has too little bandwidth for much science data to be beamed back. (more info here)