/sci/ - Science & Math

>New Horizons launched in 2006
>It reached the Moon's orbit in just nine hours
>It reached Jupiter in one year
>At this speed it would've reached Pluto in 2020-2021
>The gravity assist from Jupiter knocked off five to six years of its travel time to Pluto
>It would still take another eight years to reach Pluto
>New Horizons finally reached Pluto in July 2015, and completed its flyby in just 22 hours
>It would take another 15 months to transfer all the collected data back to Earth
New Horizons may be my favourite mission so far. Getting such clear photographs of a planet so far away is such an incredible feat.

>Pluto is on average 0.000625 LY away from the Sun
>Proxima Centauri is 4.24 LY away
The scale of space is incomprehensible.

>>12250149
>The probe's objectives included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Although the spacecraft's course could have been altered to include a Pluto encounter by forgoing the Titan flyby, exploration of the moon took priority because it was known to have a substantial atmosphere.
Seems like the decision was between Pluto and Titan. They did take the best decision at the time, though a Pluto visit decades earlier would have been amazing. I wonder if we'd still have had New Horizons visiting it, had that happened, probably not. I'm always at awe thinking about the incredible complexity necessary to throw a truck sized probe so far on a Grand Tour in the Solar System.