NASA Spacecraft Confirms Successful Flyby of Distant Solar System Object (theverge.com)

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NASA Spacecraft Confirms Successful Flyby of Distant Solar System Object (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday January 1, 2019 @03:59AM from the going-places dept.

NASA received a critical signal from one of its most distant spacecrafts this morning, confirming that the vehicle has just flown by a tiny frozen rock in the outer reaches of the Solar System. From a report: That space probe, named New Horizons, has now made history. Currently located more than 4 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft has now whizzed past the most distant -- and most primitive -- object that's ever been visited by humanity. "We have a healthy spacecraft," Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager for the New Horizons mission, said after confirming the feat. "We've just accomplished the most distant flyby."

"It's a flyby that's been over a decade in the making, too. Launched in 2006, New Horizons famously passed by Pluto in 2015, becoming the first mission to ever reach the dwarf planet. But ever since that flyby, New Horizons has kept on speeding through the Solar System, in order to meet up with this new object, nicknamed Ultima Thule.

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Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-01 04:03 · Score: 0

Currently located more than 4 billion miles from Earth...
4 billion miles? I have no idea if that is a small number or a big number!
4000000000 miles = 6437376000 kilometres.
OMG that is very, very far!

--
#DeleteFacebook
1. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:06 · Score: 0
  
  But they confirmed the "feet"........
2. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:09 · Score: 0
  
  Don't be a moran.
3. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:09 · Score: 0
  
  How close does it get?
4. Re:Miles? by The+Original+CDR · 2019-01-01 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  It's a 32-bit number.
5. Re: Miles? by Rei · 2019-01-01 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  I assumed that the fact that it has feet means that the spacecraft is of a "Voltron"-type design.
  I guess that's better than a Guntron design...
  
  --
  Musk needs a safer hobby than Twitter. Fire juggling? Cage fighting? Solo hot air balloon trips?
6. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:20 · Score: 0
  
  Is it going to take pictures or just pass by?
7. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:21 · Score: 0
  
  It's something 112 or so football fields or 6 Library of Congresses. I think.
8. Re:Miles? by ShanghaiBill · 2019-01-01 04:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  When talking about interplanetary distances, it is usually more intuitive to use AUs (the distance from the sun to the earth).
  4000000000 miles = 43 AU. About 6 light-hours.
  Astronomical Unit
9. Re:Miles? by GerryHattrick · 2019-01-01 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  Pathetic: there've been miles at least since the Roman Empire. Who 'Anglo-Saxon' over age 30 knows what a Revolutionary 'kilometre' is? Mugs like you have lost the inches in your own dainty thumbs and the feet attached to your Lycra-enhanced legs.
10. Re: Miles? by The+Grim+Reefer · 2019-01-01 04:41 · Score: 1
  
  But they confirmed the "feet"........
  So they've found life in the Kuiper belt. And it even has feet. What a start to the new year.
11. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:44 · Score: 0
  
  I know you're being sarcastic, but count yourself lucky the article (or summary) didn't measure it in football field lengths. Or Olympic pools.
12. Re:Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-01 04:54 · Score: 2
  
  FIY I'm Canadian, one of the few countries on the planet that has to deal with both Imperial and Metric units in every aspect of our lives, every day. Basically everything around us that uses a measurement system of any kind has either both or only one.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
13. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:58 · Score: 0
  
  How many Statues of Liberty or football fields is that?
14. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  Max value of 32 bit integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
  Max value of 64 bit integer is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (9.2 quintillion).
  Hopefully no overflows :-0
15. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:08 · Score: -1
  
  Get a life in 2019 for the first time Bill.
16. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  An *unsigned* 32-bit number.
17. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  Max value of 32 bit signed integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
  Max value of 64 bit signed integer is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (9.2 quintillion).
  Hopefully no overflows :-0
  FTFY.
  And unsigned 32-bit int is 4294967295; unsigned 64-bit int is 18446744073709551615
18. Re:Miles? by arth1 · 2019-01-01 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Max value of 32 bit integer is only 2,147,483,647 (2.1 billion).
  One would presume that distances are measured unsigned not signed, which has the range of 0-4294967296.
  But anyhow, if I remember correctly, NASA has historically used BCD notation, which has no logical limit on size or precision, only physical and asserted limits. (And metric, except in press releases.)
19. Re:Miles? by Brett+Buck · 2019-01-01 05:45 · Score: 0
  
  I am sure that your own country's space program, that took scientific observations of Pluto and a Kuiper Belt object, did much better. Which country was that, again?
20. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 06:00 · Score: -1
  
  Fuck your shitty anime.
21. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 06:05 · Score: 0
  
  FIY I'm Canadian, one of the few countries on the planet that has to deal with both Imperial and Metric units in every aspect of our lives, every day.
  Unlike, oh, say the UK? Where distances and speed limits are miles and mph, but gasoline (petrol) is sold in liters. And beer is sold in pints but wine and spirits are sold in ml.
  Or in the US, where very nearly everything is labeled in both metric and "imperial" units, and has been for 40+ years, but most Americans still can't fathom how much 450 g, 50 cl, 20 cm, and 20 C are.
  Hint: a pound, a US pint, 8 inches, and 70 F. All values are approximate.
22. Re:Miles? by pjt33 · 2019-01-01 06:45 · Score: 2
  
  If you want to include modern miles and Roman miles under the same heading then you're talking relative errors of 9%. That's not exactly suited for engineering. Whereas the error from the original definition of the kilometre (one forty-thousandth of the circumference of the Earth) to the modern one is 0.08%.
  But if you want to ditch the historical perspective and just think about the modern units, a /. reader should be able to convert between miles and kilometres really easily. The conversion factor of 1.609 is very close to the golden ratio, so you can use consecutive Fibonacci numbers for conversion.
23. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 06:55 · Score: 0
  
  ...the original definition of the kilometre (one forty-thousandth of the circumference of the Earth) ...
  You may wish to check your source on that one.
  I always understood that it was originally defined as a fraction of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.
  And wikipedia would seem to agree, stating that it's ... defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
24. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:01 · Score: 0
  
  And while 40,000,000 meters / 40,000 = 1km, the Earth's circumference is slightly more than 40,000,000 m, and the definition, if you're being picky, is based on Pole to Equator, not Circumference.
25. Re:Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-01 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  I did not say "the only country" I said "one of the few countries". The UK was a given.
  But the last time I saw things from a USA grocery store, pratically everything was in ounces and pounds, not grams and kilograms.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
26. Re:Miles? by xonen · 2019-01-01 07:20 · Score: 1
  
  I (as european) find it much easier to convert from metric to imperial than the other way around.
  For example, a mile is about 1.6km. Multiplying by 1.6 is much easier than dividing by 1.6.
  A pound is close enough to our traditional 'metric' pound (1/2 kg) to not cause any significant confusion (btw, we are legally not allowed to use the word 'pound' in my country). A gallon is close to 4L (3.8), and a quart is roughly a liter. From Celsius to Fahrenheit is pretty easy too, once you have one or two 'setpoints' and round 9/5 to 2. The other way around is way more confusing. Also, in a way Fahrenheit is more intuitive - 100 is hot and below 50 is cold, and has a better resolution (0.5C difference is noticeable but weather reports will round to integer numbers).
  It got to the point where at work i occasionally and by accident use inches instead of cm. My co-worker is nerdy enough to have no problem with it. 'About 5 inch' is just way more practical than '12 or 13cm'. With any construction, inches are just practical and cm are often overly precise and harder to `guess` correctly.
  Having had to work with both units, i can totally see why the USA sticks to imperial units. Simply put, they are more intuitive and the scale is usually more practical for the human mind to parse. Metric is too 'artificial' and misses practical units like feet, ounce, pint, pound and gallon. Humans are just not good with (large) numbers, and changing to an appropriate unit fixes this.
  
  --
  A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
27. Re:Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-01 07:21 · Score: 1
  
  The country that built the legs of the lunar lander and the arm of the space shuttle.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
28. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:36 · Score: 0
  
  Internet Confirms Successful Posts of Extreme Nerd Math Objects
29. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:42 · Score: 0
  
  Instead of dividing by 1.6, just multiply by 0.6. That's what those of us using customary units do. That's also 3/5 which can be handy.
30. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  I did not say "the only country" I said "one of the few countries". The UK was a given.
  But the last time I saw things from a USA grocery store, pratically everything was in ounces and pounds, not grams and kilograms.
  So when was the last time then, 1956? All packaged goods have been labeled in both metric and imperial for years. Cereal boxes, cake mix, cans of beans, corn, peas, and Campbells soup; bags of flour, sugar, bottles of Coke, etc., etc. I could go on and on. All dual labeled in metric and imperial. You can claim all you want that they're not, but they are. I can go look in my freezer and on my pantry shelf and see this. What exactly is your point in debating this?
  And no, you didn't say you were the only country. But apparently you're the only country that has a chip on your shoulder about it.
  Or maybe it's just you?
31. Re:Miles? by Brett+Buck · 2019-01-01 08:11 · Score: 0
  
  Then congratulations, you are a .05% contributor to space exploration!
32. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 09:04 · Score: 0
  
  What is that in Kessel runs?
33. Re:Miles? by reboot246 · 2019-01-01 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  Bah! I walked that far to school and back, in the snow, up hill both ways.
  Now get off my lawn!
34. Re: Miles? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2019-01-01 09:38 · Score: 1
  
  A lot of them, I imagine. Kessel is rather small, so the runs there can't be very long.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
35. Re:Miles? by LynnwoodRooster · 2019-01-01 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  We American scientists and engineers deal with both daily as well. If nothing else from the slower-thinking denizens of Slashdot complaining about English units...
  
  --
  Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
36. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 10:05 · Score: -1
  
  _,--=#[The Post CRIMER aka The Original CDR doesn't want you to read!!!]#=--,_ 1)Why-are-people-upset-with-him? 2)What-can-I-do 3)What-are-his-names 4)Who-is-FatCashewsLovesMe 5)How-to-defeat-his-hustles 6)Why-are-there-dashes 7)Pastebin-Copy
  1)Why-are-people-upset-with-himHe makes frequent low quality posts for two reasons:
  Money) BASICALLY: He made thousands of shitty posts & bragged about how much money it made him.
  DETAILS: He wants u to folow his referer links & pick up his cookie. Even if u dont buy what he linked but do buy something else from that site later on he often makes money;He ALSO tries to drive TRAFFIC to his various BLOGS & vlogs.
  Karma)He believes karma acumulates infinitely So he makes lots of pointles posts that r not bad enough to mod down;hoping they wil get moded up;He was a raging ahole when he thoght he had a karma surplus
  2)What-can-I-do DOWNMOD u wil usually get more mod points. If he is postng from a new sock acount w/ krma, get his oldst posts first. DOWNMOD him and AC in fresh thrads early on;Metmods wil reward u. METAMOD his posts. REPLY ONLY ANONYMOUSLY to the most deeply nested coments in his threds it helps hide his posts. Dwnvote his SUBMISSIONS, he uses to get krma. REPORT HIM to slshdot & the afiliate progrms he is usng. DONT MENTION his brand names c**mer.
  3)What-are-his-namesMost famous:The Original CDR, Cre|mer Cdre|mer ILoveFatCashews, Anonymous Cashews, The Fat Bastard aka TCDR
  4)Who-is-FatCashewsLoveMe AKA Tardu Lardo,FCLM Funny & anoying; Not me or crimer;He keeps lookout for infestation
  5)How-can-I-avoid-his-hustles --===DONT FOLLOW HIS LINKS!!!===--
  IF YOU MUST:Use a privte tab & nevr buy anything on the same sesion. If he fools u, close tab, cler the cookies for that site. There r sites other than yutube that wil let u watch his videos. I dont know if people view his contnt but I can pictre his jowls jigling at the thoght of people subvrting his business model
  6)Why-are-there-dashes & weird stuffI know most only skim thse posts. I want the most imprtnt infrmton to pop out at a glnce & to keep it shrt. I dont use TCDRs name becase he may think tht he benfits from geting it indxed by serch engnes. Id like 2 thnk TCDR & FCLM for editrial advice
  7)Copy: http://archive.is/TtDrY
37. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 10:19 · Score: 0
  
  A gallon is close to 4L (3.8), and a quart is roughly a liter.
  For a US gallon and a US quart that's true. UK gallons and quarts are bigger.
  In the UK, where they still measure cars' economy with MPG, the UK Honda Civic gets better MPG than an equivalent US Honda Civic.
38. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 11:22 · Score: 0
  
  27 blue whales!!
39. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 11:59 · Score: 0
  
  ... i occasionally and by accident use inches instead of cm. My co-worker is nerdy enough to have no problem with it. 'About 5 inch' is just way more practical than '12 or 13cm'...
  And I also have no problem when someone else says "five or six inches"... I just have to visualise 12-15cm and then I know exactly what they're talking about.
40. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 12:02 · Score: 0
  
  Bah! I walked that far to school and back, in the snow, up hill both ways.
  Now get off my lawn!
  You keep telling me that - but I just don't believe it.
41. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 12:05 · Score: 0
  
  Cdreimer left /. after 20 years and posted 100+ videos in 2018. His trolls are still butthurt that he left them alone with APK.
  The thing to do for him: post more videos :)
42. Re: Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 12:32 · Score: 0
  
  But nobody sees his videos.
43. Re:Miles? by mcswell · 2019-01-01 12:37 · Score: 1
  
  "beer is sold in pints" Even Pippin was surprised by this.
44. Re:Miles? by arth1 · 2019-01-01 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  Basically everything around us that uses a measurement system of any kind has either both or only one.
  This is true for most countries in the world, including the US. Think about it...
45. Re:Miles? by arth1 · 2019-01-01 15:43 · Score: 1
  
  For lengths, Imperial can be a real bitch. Adding 5-3/8" to 3-7/16" is a heck of a lot more complicated than metric.
  And then there's the mix between different base systems. 12 inches to a foot, but the inch itself is divided by 8/16/32/64 instead of by 12 like the foot is. Then there's three feet to a yard, and 32*5*11 yards to a mile, 16 ounces to a pound, and 14 pounds to a stone.
  Then there's the money with 1, 5, 10 and 25 cents, but 1, 5, 10, 20 dollars. Why is there a 25 cent coin but not a 25 dollar bill?
  I think Americans like being confused so they have an excuse for being bad at maths and needing a calculator for everything.
46. Re: Miles? by UnknowingFool · 2019-01-01 17:08 · Score: 1
  
  Then you didn't look very closely. Almost everything is labeled in both pounds/ounces and grams/kilograms.
  
  --
  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
47. Re: Miles? by ShanghaiBill · 2019-01-01 19:59 · Score: 1
  
  What is that in Kessel runs?
  The Kessel run can be completed in 12 parsecs. A parsec is 1/(sin(1/3600)) = 206265 AUs.
  So 43 AU would be 43/(206265*12) = 0.000017 Kessel runs.
48. Re: Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-02 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't know when to use signed vs unsigned variables, you do not belong on Slashdot.
  If you think that being able to look up the ranges of valid signed/unsigned values for a given x-bit number, you do not belong on Slashdot.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
49. Re:Miles? by jbengt · 2019-01-02 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Except 20C is 68F, not 70F. A pretty significant difference in comfort when setting the furnace's thermostat (at least to my wife).
50. Re:Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-02 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  And no, you didn't say you were the only country. But apparently you're the only country that has a chip on your shoulder about it.
  The U.S.A. is officially a non-metric country. Canada and the UK are officially metric countries but have to deal with imperial measurements every day. Example: my grocery flyers are full of imperial-only numbers... but I grew up learning metric. Why the fuck are the numbers advertised in the flyers not all 100% metric? That's the difference between the USA and Canada/UK.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
51. Re:Miles? by DontBeAMoran · 2019-01-02 02:27 · Score: 1
  
  Still, the Canadian legs of the lunar lander touched the moon before Neil Armstrong.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
52. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-02 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  The USA has been metric since the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
53. Re:Miles? by Immerman · 2019-01-03 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Lengths are a whole separate issue - you can buy decimal-inch rulers, just like you can buy fractional-centimeter rulers. It's just that they're more difficult to find than "normal" versions.
  Fractional rulers are very useful when building things by hand, where you very often end up wanting to divide lengths in half. It does however make both calculations and comparison of different sub-unit lengths more difficult. But most people these days don't build things, at least not often enough to learn how to use a fractional ruler well. But we keep fractional-inch rulers, because that's the way most people have done it (also, subdividing a decimal ruler to be easy to read is a challenge)
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
54. Re:Miles? by Immerman · 2019-01-03 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  If you want intuitive and practical why not go back a little further? A hand is more practical for most things than either an inch or a foot, and actually maps more gracefully to metric than its own system: 1 hand = 4 inches = 1/3 foot =~ 10cm
  I also prefer cm to inches for the same reason you like Farenheit for temperature: A half an inch difference is noticeable (visually & functionally) in most contexts, which means a whole lot of inch measurements need to be fractional, while you can usually design things to nice clean multiples of 1cm without significant compromise. (and can easily use mm instead, if greater precision is needed)
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
55. Re:Miles? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-07 09:05 · Score: 0
  
  Minimum Distance from Sun: 146 million km (91 million miles)
  Maximum Distance from Sun: 152 million km (94.5 million miles)
  42.3 AU to 43.95 AU
  Lets please stop using distance to the sun as a metric...LightYears is acceptable, even LightHours.
  People who can't comprehend the distance, shouldn't even attempt to anyways.
confirming the feet? our spaceship has feet? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:12 · Score: 0

that must be a long way to walk...
Audio message received by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:25 · Score: 0

The probe received a message saying "There is life here, long life. You are welcome to come and join us!". It was shortly followed by another message saying "Stay away!".
Re:confirming the feet? our spaceship has feet? by dyfet · 2019-01-01 04:28 · Score: 1

One small step for....
Well? by alaskana98 · 2019-01-01 04:29 · Score: 3

Pics or it didn't happen... ;)
1. Re:Well? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:48 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  lol "the verge". slashdot has really gone downhill.
  It's Not much to see anyway
2. Re: Well? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  After 13 years you can wait one more day
  Just hope they remembered to take the lense cap off
3. Re: Well? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:49 · Score: 0
  
  it will take 18 - 24 months to download all of the data that was collected. like the Pluto mission we will see a couple new images a month and then some real scientific papers once they have all the data to review
What now? by KixWooder · 2019-01-01 04:32 · Score: 1

Any more objects that it might be headed towards?

--
I hate fat people.
1. Re: What now? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:41 · Score: 0
  
  I heard it was making a second pass by Saturn next year
2. Re:What now? by Solandri · 2019-01-01 05:33 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not this close. The flyby trajectory past Pluto was selected so Pluto's gravity would redirect New Horizons to Ultima Thule. The spacecraft can only alter its trajectory by using its thrusters now. There was another potential target (pending funding from Congress for a mission extension).a bit more than a year from now, but the "encounter" will probably be distant, and mostly be limited to spectrographic comparison with observations from Earth. But you never know. We could get lucky and discover another KBO along the spacecraft's trajectory close enough to use thrusters for another close flyby.
3. Re: What now? by stevelinton · 2019-01-01 12:12 · Score: 1
  
  I heard it was making a second pass by Saturn next year
  Definitely not. It's nowhere near Saturn and doesn't even begin to have the fuel to get there.
4. Re: What now? by Karhgath · 2019-01-02 05:40 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed, NH is not in an heliocentric orbit and cannot currently attempt to come back inside the Kuiper belt perimeter at current velocity with its remaining delta-V from thrusters, or at least get to any usable heliocentric orbit. It would need a massive object to further alter trajectory. There might be other flyby targets possible, but they would always be farther away.
  You can see the current NH trajectory here:
  http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
5. Re:What now? by Areyoukiddingme · 2019-01-02 12:56 · Score: 1
  
  But you never know. We could get lucky and discover another KBO along the spacecraft's trajectory close enough to use thrusters for another close flyby.
  If we get really lucky, New Horizons could find another KBO by colliding with it. There's always a chance.
They still think digital watches are cool by Hognoxious · 2019-01-01 04:37 · Score: 1

In what sense is it primitive? Still running a 32bit 2.4 kernel? Did the probe get showered with spears and arrows as it flew past?

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1. Re:They still think digital watches are cool by l0ungeb0y · 2019-01-01 04:44 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  It has no phones, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury ... as primitive as can be
2. Re:They still think digital watches are cool by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  Because it's so far from the sun, the density and speed of colliding objects are known to be far lower than in the inner solar system. Chances are its surface is still little changed from when it was formed.
3. Re:They still think digital watches are cool by AJWM · 2019-01-01 05:10 · Score: 2
  
  Gilligan, little buddy, is that you?
  
  --
  -- Alastair
4. Re:They still think digital watches are cool by techno-vampire · 2019-01-01 15:16 · Score: 1
  
  Still running a 32bit 2.4 kernel?
  
  Not only that, it's still using SysV init!
  
  --
  Good, inexpensive web hosting
5. Re:They still think digital watches are cool by Hognoxious · 2019-01-05 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  That's not primitive, That's just old.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Intuitive" by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 04:48 · Score: -1

"Intuitive"? What, exactly, is intuitive about an AU? How the fuck far away is the sun? No, it may be useful, but it's not intuitive.
1. Re:"Intuitive" by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:29 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Looks like you've never spent time to develop an intuition for how far away the sun is. It's a one-time investment, and then you can understand every distance given in AU.
2. Re:"Intuitive" by Immerman · 2019-01-03 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  1 AU is roughly 389x the distance to the Moon. 3,735x the circumference of the Earth. Or about 31 million times the distance to the horizon when standing at sea level.
  In other words, so much larger than anything you have any frame of reference to, that you have no possibility of truly understanding it in those terms - the human brain starts having real problems accurately visualizing even a 1000x difference in scale, most people have trouble with even 100x.
  If you want to visualize anything in astronomy, you need to develop a completely different frame of reference to do so. And the distance to the sun is one of the most natural (and thus, intuitive) reference frames for us to use to visualize distances in the solar system.
  As someone once said - "The nipple is the only truly intuitive user interface, everything else is learned". By the same token any "intuitive" tool for thought must actually be learned - "inuitive" just means that it's as relevant as possible to your realm of experience. For distances in space, the distance to our sun is the only such thing on remotely the right scale.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Omod 0p by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:02 · Score: -1

to llok i8to eulogies to BSD's sorely diminished.
Here's a link to pictures by SuperKendall · 2019-01-01 05:32 · Score: 3, Informative

This link is stolen from an AC that responded to you, inexplicably down-modded despite having very useful information:
Ultima Thule pictures

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Here's a link to pictures by Tablizer · 2019-01-01 06:23 · Score: 2
  
  Article: "Even though it's a pixelated blob, it's a better pixelated blob than the day before"
  I tried this justification about myself with my wife. Didn't work.
  
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  Table-ized A.I.
billions of dollars spent by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 05:51 · Score: -1

and we discovered a rock. but funding border security is a no no.
a big win for a $4 trillion out of control federal government.
1. Re:billions of dollars spent by gtall · 2019-01-01 06:21 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  It isn't the federal government out of control, it is the rest of us. Any threat to SS and Medicare (the biggest part of the budget) is met with angst, and threats of revenge. Americans also like the rest of the world not being run by those nice Chinese and Russians. How about that farm bill, gotta fund those family farms even if most of it goes to corporate farms.
  To make matters worse, the Republicans decided to pay off their corporate masters and gave them a tax decrease which they promptly spent on share buy-backs so the long suffering corporate officers were not inconvenienced. Trillion dollar deficits are now built in.
  When the Fed decides to reel in the easy money policy, Bozo the Wonder President decides it is the reason the stock market stinks rather than the 19th century tariffs as he tries to turn the 21st century economy into the 19th century's. And yet, his "base" thinks he's the Second Coming for screwing those naughty immigrants who want to come here and work and help replace the Americans who are no longer being born at replacement rate. And, in a world where understanding other cultures is necessary to have any sort of decent exports, Bozo and his base have decided they don't need no stinking culture.
2. Re:billions of dollars spent by ZombieCatInABox · 2019-01-01 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  Here's what Bozo himself thinks of his base:
  "I could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone, and I still wouldn't lose any voters"
  In light of this, every single one of his delirious, unbelievably moronic tweets suddenly make perfect sense, considering who they are directed to.
3. Re:billions of dollars spent by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 07:04 · Score: 0
  
  You NPCs are funny.
4. Re:billions of dollars spent by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 08:26 · Score: 0
  
  When the Fed decides to reel in the easy money policy
  
  When did this happen exactly and by what mechanism? Federal overspending hasn't ebbed significantly in your lifetime. Trying to turn this into partisan horseshit is what's keeping the country down as a whole. You're part of the problem.
5. Re:billions of dollars spent by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 08:46 · Score: 0
  
  At least someone is. You certainly aren't.
6. Re:billions of dollars spent by jbengt · 2019-01-02 02:27 · Score: 1
  
  The Fed in this context is the Federal Reserve Board, not Congress. So you're way off base.
Sister? Cousin? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-01 06:13 · Score: 0

"We have a healthy spacecraft," Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager for the New Horizons mission ...
The coincidence is delicious, David Bowman, after all, being one of the characters from Kubrik's 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Perspective by Tablizer · 2019-01-01 07:05 · Score: 5, Informative

The probe is going about 8 miles per second. The object is about 20 miles across. That means it passes the distance of the object's size in less than 3 seconds.
At closest approach, the object appears roughly the apparent size of our moon from Earth according to one article.
Thus, if you were sitting on the probe, and put your thumb out and up next to Thule, held it steady and closed one eye, your thumb would cover the distance of it in about 3 seconds.
It also means the probe only has a minute or two to use its instruments near closest approach. The fly-by speed is almost comparable to watching a high plane fly overhead.
Being the probe has to swivel its entire body to aim each instrument, that's a lot of dancing in a short time slot. (Some instruments point the same direction to save swiveling.) Further, the exact position wasn't precisely known ahead of time, so many instruments and cameras have to scan an area larger than the target to be sure they cover it.
Operators sent a "timing correction" to the probe a couple of days ago they said was a 2-second shift, applying updated navigation info using recent probe photos (when Thule was still a spec). I can see why 2 seconds makes a difference at that speed.

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Table-ized A.I.
MOD UP by SuperKendall · 2019-01-01 07:56 · Score: 1

Sorry to steal your link man, at the time I posted you were at -1. Glad to see you getting the recognition you deserve...

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What have the Romans ever done for us? by murdocj · 2019-01-01 14:42 · Score: 1

Cue the "NASA hasn't put a man on Mars so it's useless" wailing.
NPC No Longer by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-02 07:49 · Score: 0

For being NPCs, we sure seem to be effective at keeping Trump from wasting money on dumb fucking walls and repealing healthcare laws, dontcha think?
Don't forget that tomorrow the majority of the US will be celebrating our newest holiday - Investigation Day.
Trump better start limbering up for all that butt-sex he'll be getting in prison.
Kessel, Belgium by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-03 13:34 · Score: 0

I LOL'd! :-D
Totally surreal challenge/event by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-03 14:04 · Score: 0

First, there is massive delayed gratification here -- like 12 years of flight time? And probably many more years of planning and construction.
At any point, from moment of launching, to swinging around Pluto, something could have gone wrong with the spacecraft.
And then this one-minute photo-shoot of this last object the spacecraft is likely to see before it spends a lonely decade in space and maybe can't hear voices from home anymore.
I cannot imagine the levels of anxiety of the dozens of people most dedicated to this mission around the minutes of the flyby, and the six hours before getting some confirmation that the spacecraft successfully captured good data. Wow! Maybe the only way to cope is to be working on several missions at the same time, to have an emotional cushion when things go bad on any one mission.
It must be a HUGE thrill for the team right now! They did it! And now it will be a stream of images and measurements, and advancements in science. The feeling of pride for such an achievement must be tremendous -- life long, and part of human history.
Meanwhile, in interstellar space... by Anonymous Coward · 2019-01-03 14:18 · Score: 0

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/
So cool! Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, both 41 years of flight time, 145 AU and 120 AU from Earth, respectively (compared to 43 AU of upstart New Horizons, ha ha).
According to the JPL site, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 "communicate with NASA daily". Must be a little joy each day to receive a note (sent 20 hours earlier!) from these two spacecraft brothers.