/sci/ - Science & Math

It's happening by the way

does nobody care about new horizon wtf

>>10253061
I do, looking forward to New Years for once.

This is one of the hypest things of the year. We didn’t even know MU69 existed four years ago.

New Horizons will be close enough that MU69 appears about as big as our moon appears to us, by the way.

Also, they want to do another flyby of a Kuiper Belt object in the 2020s. That would be cool

>>10253061
Too many people distracted by watching the musk melon patch grow.

>>10253215
I’ll admit I’m supremely excited for elon’s big shiny Texas ding dong, but this is also awesome to follow

>>10252382
Just a quick reminder, because the government shutdown you will not be able to watch the flyby on NASA TV. Instead streams will be available on the John Hopkins APL website:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

>>10253353
Actually they turned NASA tv back on for it

You there, yes you. Watch this video. https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1078798195378061312

48 hours to go...

when is it going to encounter MU69? when will we get the first images?

It's hitting me just now that I have the new-year's interval off work, so I can follow this closely, much as I followed the Pluto flyby with great attention a few years ago. Yay!

>>10253884
1000 pixel image will be available quite soon after the encounter. All of the data takes 20 months to download, though

>>10254457
Some guy said the good shit will be coming in later today

>>10255140
no; the 33 meter resolution images will take a while to get.

on track!

>tfw been waiting for this flyby for years
>at the last minute the government shuts down and have to go through alternate channels to get info

new horizons-chan doesn't deserve this

>>10255140
if by good stuff you mean 6-pixel diameter photos on Tuesday, then yes. New Horizons only turns back to beam to earth at a high bitrate six or so hours after the encounter

blurry boi

what shape is it going to be?

>>10255353
I hope it's P

Oh shit, I almost forgot about the New Horizons flyby for the New Year.

>>10255541
don’t forget about achieving orbit at Bennu

>>10255224
Thanks NASA anon

>>10255353

>>10255554
Hayabusa2 is more interesting.

Knowledge update is confirmed received. The 2 second adjustment is locked in.
Round trip time is just over 12 hours now

>>10253622
So we are going to make this map ask the sailors what a whale looks like.
>they spout out water
>big and fat with tails
>strange teeth
>smaller ones with fins that stick up
Lets just take the front half of a boar and the back half of a fish and call it a day.

>>10255916
What am I looking at here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyVVcImYg9E

Simulated fly by live

25 hours to go!

>>10256029
Pluto the dog.

>>10255682
Bullshit. Osiris-Rex has a goddamn arm on it so it can beat the shit out of Bennu and Hayabusa2. Yeah, Hayabusa2's gotta bomb on it, but that's fucking cowardly.

Thank god for Australia

>>10256217
Holy shit, that's a battlestation.

>>10252382
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOk6HB609po

>>10256217
Do you do any occult rituals at JPL in honor of Jack Parsons?

>>10256279

Post more New Horizons-chan for good luck

>>10256401
Someone commission Shadman quick

reminder that Ultima Thule is the size of a city

It is interesting how a probe launched at Pluto is able to visit another rock, and there are talks that yet another flyby will be possible. In hindsight it would have been correct to just launch like a dozen probes into various directions towards Kuiper Belt and then refine flyby trajectories a decade later. Imagine having a flyby of such object every month...

>>10256608
Will soon get boring.

>>10256608
Would be the smart thing to do so of course US government wont do that

>>10253219
Google said he's rockets in the dominican republic

>>10256602
>Half the size of fort macmurray
Yeah but what's the volume faggot

>>10256401
BSApricot could do one for Ulitma Thule

>>10255441
Me too

>>10256738

How likely is it that New Horizons will send back images of Nibiru?

>>10256959
None percent.
I'm all for naming the potential planet 9 nibriu though, just to be a dick.

>tfw New Horizon-chan will be floating in the black emptiness of space until the end of the time while it slowly dies and becomes forgotten.

>>10257047
yeah well SOMEONE didn’t get congress to fund a Pluto orbiter.

>>10257047
It will not be forgotten soon.

>>10257047
we'll catch up with it. there'll be a guided tour for families by 2500 whereby they will fly tight circles around it while the guide provides boring explanations - think about the way we visit medieval ruins - before coming home for lunch.

>>10256738
imagine if it actually was

the shitstorm

>>10257100
They won't go on a tour for a stupid rock, they'll go to see Musk's meme car. >>10257306
Now THAT's how you get immortalized.

Bump for new horizons-Chan's big day

Brian may showed up

>>10257498
And will debut a new song tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg

stream

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE STICKIED.

MODS PLS STICKY, TYPE "2ND", "3RD", "NTH" IF YOU AGREE

>>10257753
2nd

>>10257753
I second this, it's an important event for astrophysics.

>>10257753
New year is fun an all, but it happens every year. This will be the first major event of 2019 and the first visit of humanity to a kuiper belt object, which will help validate and refine theories about the formation of our solar system, and star systems in general.

I'll nth for a sticky

long boi

I am so fucking pumped

>>10257787
That's some enhanced bullshit right there

>>10257787
l-lewd

Phat downlink God bless Australia for saving America's flyby

Less than 8 hours now

Bennu has a satellite! https://www.asteroidmission.org/?latest-news=nasas-osiris-rex-spacecraft-enters-close-orbit-around-bennu-breaking-record

Failsafe2 should have downlinked an hour ago. Anyone leaked it yet?

>>10257998
It’ll be released on the 1st

>>10258007
NYT1 is on the 1st.

>>10258007
>>10258046

>>10258046
Failsafes will be released on the 1st according to the project managers

>>10258052
where’d you get that?

>>10257731
>ITS BEEN A LONG ROAD...
>GETTING FROM THERE TO HERE
Did I just hear what I think I heard?

>>10257996
>Now, the spacecraft will circle Bennu about a mile (1.75 kilometers) from its center, closer than any other spacecraft has come to its celestial object of study. (Previously the closest orbit of a planetary body was in May 2016, when the Rosetta spacecraft orbited about four miles (seven kilometers) from the center of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.) The comfortable distance is necessary to keep the spacecraft locked to Bennu, which has a gravity force only 5-millionths as strong as Earth’s. The spacecraft is scheduled to orbit Bennu through mid-February at a leisurely 62 hours per orbit.
Was this the hardest orbital insertion of all time?

5 hours to go, right?

>>10258217
Yeah. It's 170,000 away

Why should I be excited about a dead rock?

>>10258227
It's literally the oldest dead rock ever

>>10258227
It's pretty neat because it's an extension of the mission. They had enough gas to do a flyby of another object, so they did. We haven't gotten a close look at things out this far.

>>10257845
It's the Dank Spess Network, what did you expect? You need three dishes all over the world to receive continuously.

>>10257753
Nth

>>10257753
Nth

So much blather.

hyped. is there a site to follow the flyby?

it's flying closer than it did to pluto so will images be more detailed?

>>10258369
>is there a site to follow the flyby?
NASA TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg

>will images be more detailed?
I'd assume so.

>H Y P E

Hope you guys realize that the data from this flyby will be the primary source of data on kuiper belt objects for decades and the we are witnessing history

Mission to Haumea fucking when

It's probably the weirdest TNO we know so far. Imagine how wild the images would be

>>10258417
Not before the next mission or two to Titan. Way more worthwhile than the plethora of asteroid missions nowadays.

>inb4 hydrocarbon and amine signatures

Rolling for alien probe

What is happening?

3 hours 15 minutes, only 100,000 miles to go

>>10258446
11est we get a good image

>>10258446

A space probe called "New Horizons" which took the first-ever close-up pics of the Pluto system a few years ago (its primary mission), is currently carrying out a secondary mission. The secondary mission: fly by and probe a small dead rock in the Kuiper Belt, a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69. The New Horizons team have given this object the autistic nickname "Ultima Thule", which they are currently butchering with terrible American pronounciation (and I say this as an American).

The timing with the new year is kinda fun. It's the furthest thing out in space that's been closely investigated, so it's objectively an important piece of science being done, assuming all goes well. Due to light time, it'll take several hours-a day or two to get the real gratification of some good images, but the closest approach itself will occur in three hours' time.

On a personal note, I'm an aged boomer who grew up with Pluto being a planet, and the Voyager 2 images, yet close photography of Pluto was always missing. So I'm happy that the probe continues to putter along.

pluto.jhuapl.edu

>>10258052
So they already have the fail safes downloaded right? Hi res is being taken now I assume

>>10258491
In a couple hours yeah. Should be approximately the same size as looking at the moon through binoculars

What are you drinking tonight, /nh/?

For me, it's Magners

ay hell naw why we shootin a space rock
we need monies for dem community progrums

Nice singalong, NASA. Nicely done.

Wait, why can't New Horizons manage targeting by itself? Trying to aim the cameras from Earth seems like a bad plan.

>>10258629
too complex. Their recent 2 second time adjustment should ensure that everything lines up pretty well.’

>>10258631
>too complex
Really? Ultima Thule should be vastly brighter than everything else visible. Is it just an issue of the amount of processing power available on New Horizons?

>>10258633
yeah and you really really don’t want a dynamic instruction list going into a one-chance encounter. It’ll be fine.

33 meters / pixel will happen, noice

The NASA logo is blinking?

1 hour 15 minutes, 45,000 miles

>>10258645

government shutdown.

>>10258647
Where's that from?

>>10258663

Here
>>10256071

New Horizons just completed some attitude program

>>10258665
It's a shame that thing doesn't seem to run on Linux.

MONOSPACE HARDSUBS

Claiming Ultima Thule was my waifu before anyone else does

Damn May, you still got it

>>10258688
I think that differential imaging dude already has.

Question, does the countdown on the website accounts for light-delay? Do we have to wait for another couple hours to get confirmation that the fly by executed successfully?

>BOOMERS
>HECK
>BE PROUD
>GRAB YOUR NEIGHBORS
is this dude fo real

>>10258742
~6hr, yep. then another few hours before the actual press conf and image releases

How does an object become shaped like this?

the meme gender man

>>10258748
Collision between two objects?

>>10258748
two objects lightly colliding, neither being heavy enough to become spherical.

NANI!?

What's the smaller object appearing in the simulation?

>>10258753
>>10258754
Do you think it is an ice-bridge?

>>10252382

GO GO GO NEW-HORIZONS-KUN! WE BELIEVE IN YOU! GANNBATTE!!!

SUDDENLY MUSIC

Is anyone else having the stream die a lot?

this feels like the Home Shopping Network

jew

Muh peepee haha it's going to be aliens

>>10258782
Ultima Thule is an ancient Jewish spaceship.
>Gay Jewish Niggers from Outer Space

Closest Approach.

you guys hear that explosion on one of the streams? I think it crashed into it

>>10258802
couldn't hear anything over that screaming kid

man those must be a long 20 months for the researchers

>>10252382
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NuFVQk_CCs

embarrassing production value
are they even trying

how long til pics?

>>10258812
Why would they put effort into it if they know it's all bullshit?

/bedtime/
see you guys tomorrow for the NYT images

>9:45 a.m.: New Horizons Signal Acquisition from Ultima Thule Flyby (All Channels)
>11:30 a.m.: New Horizons Post-Flyby Press Conference

>>10258815
Here it is straight from NASA.

>>10255353

What is this?

>>10258838
simulation

>>10258838
eyes on the solar system. free program to track stuff, from probes to planets to Elon's Roadster. It also integrates the instrument views and spacecraft maneuvers

>>10258838
Made up bullshit

>>10258846
>>10258850
OK
They tried to guess what the backside looked like too

Where is ALICE pointing?

When's the press conference?

>>10257787

>>10257787
If Altima Thule is shaped like a cock I'll be absolutely delighted

>>10257819
You can work out to some degree how shapes will present over pixels like that, and the one of the left is literally 18 pixels. Obviously it is taller than it is wide, it's more right leaning than left (right side pixels are brighter than left in general), the bottom left pixel is much darker than the bottom right.
So you can get an idea of the shape of the object from just a handful of pixels but you're not going to resolve details out of it.

>>10255353
Bristol stool chart in monochrome

>>10259073
>Space probe sent to visit Pluto does a follow-up with a recently discovered Kuiper Belt object.
>you wanting to stick said object up your lose asshole

Well this is a nice side quest I guess. Lots of interdasting stuff over there. Maybe something nice happens after this.

Why does it take until 10am est to get the next communication?

Normies are waking up, Twitter stats went from 50 posts to 450 over the last hours

>>10259191
Oh I just realized this is the 6 hour relativistic delay

>>10258227
Most distant object ever visited.

>>10259201
>Oh I just realized this is the 6 hour relativistic delay
nothing relativistic about it. it's just that far. radio signals take six hours to arrive at Earth.

>>10258184
What and that Japanese one which they dropped probes on then are taking the satellite down to the surface to scoop up dirt then fly back?

I WANT MY ULTIMA PICS

GOD

DAMNIT

When is the press conference?

>>10259618
I think it's 10:15 EST.

>>10258748
They are a contact binary. Two boulders orbit eachother. Slowly the orbit decays until they come into contact, and they just sit like that. It's not uncommon to see asteroids like this.

>>10252382
https://youtu.be/VM1NExkh40I
We need to name more things in space after Tangerine Dream albums.

They're running late. That's probably not a good sign.

>>10259801
Holy shit if they fucked up and photographed empty space...

IT'S GO TIME

Fuck off with the commentary jesus christ

Is it running late?

>>10259820
It's NASA they always do this

more like ultima toolate

Lol, they have a Pluto plush

CARRIER!

TELEMETRY

Get a load of the stone like mountain man with the coffee

This is like 56k internet lmao

So far so good

>>10259844
>501b/s
This makes 56k look blazing.

Well at least New Horizons-chan didn't plow into Ultima Thule

Nav is 30 minutes away?

>>10259418
>nothing relativistic about it
>it's just that far

FUCKING FACEPALM

THE STATE OF THE THE VILLAGE OF NAV

New Horizons is still talking. I guess it's transmitting science?

Images when?

>>10259867
20 months

Can irregular objects really be called "worlds"? I thought that in astronomically terms only non-stellar round objects were referred to as that

>>10259867
Probably at their presser. Low resolution from failsafe in one hour

>>10259879
Like this

>>10259867

>>10259875
I'm not aware of any formal astronomic definition of "world".

>>10259880
Where did you get that?

>>10259880
they're really milking this.

>>10259880

100x100, then a 400x100. Underwhelming

>>10259885
500 bps data rate dude

>>10259885
its 4.5 billion miles away fucking hell give them a chance yeah?

Does this have hills and valleys?
Can it have an atmosphere?
What are the odds we see a ayy tower structure?

>>10259919
no, it's not a sphere so you can't define stuff like that really. no. 0%

>>10259919
thule is nowhere near big enough to form a spheroid, hills and valleys will mean nothing

>>10259919
Most likely it's a totally unexciting rock

>>10259926
>look at this bit here
>its got an inclusion
>look I say

>>10259727
and Schultz albums, perhaps Heldon too

>>10259857
facepalm with a shovel, then. what is relativistic about distance? if aether was real, it would still take 6.x hours for the signal to arrive.

They better hurry up with this press conference im too hungover for this

>ultima thule
named after a goofy place in a book that is barely readable
I would have preferred something more rational sounding, more science and less absinthe-wine loopiness
inb4 you didn't ask for my opinion

>>10259956
it's not called ultima thule, it's called mu69. ultima thule is just kind of a nickname.

They need to hurry up and download that medium-res photo so I can go to fucking sleep already.

>>10259956
>I would have preferred something more rational sounding, more science and less absinthe-wine loopiness
So 486958?

Every astronomical object gets an absinthe-wine name. There's no point stopping that tradition now.

>>10259960
>it's called mu69
Technically it's 2014 MU69.

>>10259956
it will be named something different officially once they have photos

HAPPENING

Presser in 5 thank god

they showed the pic on the screen briefly. peanut confirmed

"Momentarily" seems to be the word of the day.

Dickrock confirmed

DONG CONFIRMED

bilobate

HI-RES PICTURE HERE

They just said ultima thule is bi

>>10259975
>ultima
what is this retarded shit
>thule
what the fuck is that
>just a nickname
I doubt I'm the only one sickened by this betrayal of the whole field of science-fiction by picking something goofy
oh hey lets call it goofy, near pluto right
or outeroid one
Outeroids
yeah that's right
instead of Loopitarianini Whoooloo
lol

>>10260028
Is this what space exploration is for? Spending ungodly amounts of money to take pictures of massive flying spacecocks?

>>10260031
>>10260029
>>10260028

>>10260036
>I doubt I'm the only one sickened by this betrayal of the whole field of science-fiction by picking something goofy
It's latin, doofus.

>>10260036
Just stop.

>>10260028
>>10260029
space peanus weenus haha

reminder that they are doing this without pay

february we get the best res images

>>10260062
I just want to know if it's one or two objects. That should be revealed tomorrow, right?

>>10260070
I'd imagine so.

>>10260070
It's 100% a proto comet nucleus. Which is what you'd expect.

human extinction confirmed

>we need time to double-check our fake asteroid photos in 3d before releasing them to the public

can't let the sheep learn of the alien monolith before we're ready to harvest their organs right?

>>10255648

>>10260028
Thanks Jesus

>>10260070
Its most likely two objects that have kind of glomed together.

Why is there so little hype? It's the most exciting space event since Pluto flyby and the thread is barely alive. I am disappoint.

>>10260207
I am highly certain that Ultima Thule is an individual bilobate, as opposed to two rocks orbiting each other at unprecedented proximity. Furthermore, the data processed this month and February will provide us with daily insights into the history and nature of our Solar System.

>>10260219
>at unprecedented proximity.
It's seen in the asteroid belt. As long as you're not too massive you can have a contact binary between two separate solid chunks.

>>10260222
Good point. If contact binary were so unlikely, the team at New Horizons probably wouldn't have included it as an option.
Sorry for being retarded

>>10260028
haha benis

>>10260226

Actually, the NH team did say during the conference that it would be unprecedented and they also all think that it is highly unlikely that it's a binary object. It's not impossible, which is why they are not ruling it out just yet, but it would be surprising.

I wonder if you could design a mission where you've got a highspeed mother ship that does the flyby, jettisoning some smaller probes or microsats that could collect more date for a few days, and relay the information back through the mother ship.

>>10260240
Thanks for the clarification

>>10260241
have fun jettisoning probes at 30,000mph to cancel out the relative speed

>>10260226

The relevant question is asked around 45:05 and the team literally says that 'it would be unprecedented in terms of how closely they would orbit together"

https://youtu.be/hW1rc-D3A5I

>>10260249
Yeah, well, what do they know. Nerds.
Still could be neat, if the different lobes were from separate bodies it would be like a BOGO on top of a BOGO.
I let my imagination get the better of me.

>>10260270
That would be like so impossible dude like that would have serious theoretical consequences, that would contradict everything we know a bout science!

>>10260246
What if you just "crash" the probes into the body?
Might require some engineering to survive the crash

>>10259883
space is big, light takes a long time to travel, downloading the images is slow.

>>10260241

No way these smaller probes would be able to slow down enough to orbit, but Deep Impact-style impactors could be feasible. You woldn't need to slow down, just alter your course - and with the advances in nanosats they could possibly gather enough useful data for this to be worth it. - and the impact would create a cloud that would give the mothership the opportunity to analyze the composition.

>>10260276

They don't need to survive, they just need to gather data en route. And you would need some Doctor Who-level sci fi tech to create something that survives crashing into solid rock at Mach 50.

Look into Deep Impact mission, it's already been done.

>>10260289
Maybe not even orbit, but you could have you flight plan take you near enough some interesting points, send out a shot gun blast of small simple probes that could fly by and take more measurements, or crash into it.
Places that are interesting, and that you might want some more information about, but aren't flashy enough to justify their own mission (or that have a bigger mission coming in the near future, but you still want the most recent information on it). Maybe have a whole suite of different probes good for different things, like a swiss army knife. It would need a good power source, fast engines, and good broadcast capability. Have it's final mission to just go far and fast and keep in touch. Call it Voyager 6, for a laugh.

>>10260289
What if you do something like the Stardust mission, but in reverse. Instead of using aerogel to soften the impact of a particle hitting it, we use a big fat brick of aerogel in front of the craft to ablate as it impacts. We just need to slow it down so it's going slower than the speed of sound (in metal), by the time the actual probe hits the asteroid. Oh yeah and withstand the big blast of plasma. Or maybe we fire one probe of just reaction mass and use the detonation wave to slow down like orion used bombs to accelerate.

>>10260326

This wouldn't work for several reasons.


First of all -space is HUGE. What seems like a cluster of interesting objects on a solar system map is actually millions or billions of kilometers of absolutely nothing, with an occasional rock here and there. You can't launch a probe in the direction of some object and then launch a probe in the direction of some other minor planet, many AU's away. It would require a lot of delta-v, meaning a lot of fuel, translating into an obscenely heavy mothership and a rocket that can only be built in Kerbal Space Program, not in real life.
Secondly - how would you transmit the data? You would need a powerful transmiter, which would require a heavy and bulky source of power, which would make the entire thing even heavier. You're essentially talking about sending a New Horizons to launch another New Horizons, while in deep space.

All of these issues disappear if you simply send an impactor that just needs to chamge it's orbit by a few thousand kilometers, so that it crashes into the target while the main ship flies by safely. You don't need much fuel or a massive engine, just a gentle push. You don't need a powerful antenna to transmit data over dozens of AU's, just a tiny transmiter that can beam the data to the mothership over tens of thousands of kilometers at most. You don't need a lot of power, just a small battery that lasts a few hours, perhaps a day or two.
This is precisely what NASA did with Deep Impact - and with the miniaturisation of electronics and the development of larger rockets, I can totally se how in a few years a New Horizons - style or Voyager-style mission could carry several of these small impactors to crash them into each object it flies by. Perhaps this is the way to study the Pluto system - at some distance before the approach you shoot out several small impactors on a collision course with Pluto, Charon, Nix, Hydra and so on, while the main ship receives all the data. That could work.

>>10260347

>We just need to slow it down so it's going slower than the speed of sound (in metal), by the time the actual probe hits the asteroid.

It is totally possible to land on an asteroid, ESA did that with Rosetta - it's just not possible to do it with a probe launched from another probe that is flying by at 15 or 20 km/s. You can easily check it out yourself, either :
a) by messing around with the rocket equation and seeing for yourself that even a tiny nanosat would require a giant rocket
b) try it in Kerbal Space Program. Send a ship o, say, Eeloo and while flying there try to launch a probe to anywhere else. It can be done - but only by implementing Kerbal solutions like building monstrous rockets with asparagus staging, if you tried doing it without gamey tactics, you will fail spectacularily.

>>10260408
What if it had detachable multi stage boosters with independent payloads you can jettison in the orbital plane of its target.

>>10260374
>You can't launch a probe in the direction of some object and then launch a probe in the direction of some other minor planet, many AU's away. It would require a lot of delta-v, meaning a lot of fuel, translating into an obscenely heavy mothership and a rocket that can only be built in Kerbal Space Program, not in real life.

because of errors in your initial direction? this kind of reminds me of gradient descent with line search. if you stay on course until you're no longer getting any closer (until your original direction is orthogonal to the direction of the destination), you'd only have to make so many corrections since each time your distance would be reduced by an order of magnitude.

>>10260041
It was either that or give it to the rich, again.

>>10260430
cont.

so if you're off by one degree, your distance at the point when you'd need to change direction would be less than 2% your original distance each time.

Sorry, posted this in the wrong thread earlier. Is there a timeline yet for the return of the New Horizons astronauts to Earth?

>>10260522
I heard they're going to land on Pluto and colonise it

>>10260430
>because of errors in your initial direction

What "errors"? I'm referring to the idea of launching probes from a spaceship flying towards a specific location. You are either launching a spaceship that is supposed to land on a target/orbit around it or not. In the first scenario, you need gravitational assists to slow down anyway, since we don't have a rocket poweful enough to launch a probe AND fuel to slow down from 15 km/s of relative velocity. In the second scenario, you end up flying by your target at 15 km/s and even if you deployed a tiny nanosat, it would still require more fuel than the weight of the entire New Horizons to slow down anyway. If you want to deploy the small probe early enough so that it doesn't require as much delta-v to slow down...then IT can't be a tiny nanosat, it has to be a heavy probe and it is at best idiotic and inefficient (and impossible at worst) to launch both at once and you're much better of launching two separate rockets

>>10260522
Since spacecraft are expected to get faster in the future, they'll get picked up by a passing interstellar colony ship by the time they die.

>>10260542
Thank you.

>>10260522
They're not coming back until they recover the dog that was on sputnik.

>>10260425
Good luck deploying multiple payloads with independent propulsion within the 500kg payload that an Atlas V is able to launch on a Pluto-flyby trajectory.

>>10260306
Deploy a mile-long spring in front of it to slow the probe down

>>10260549
>delta-v

i misunderstood you. i thought you meant that you'd have to make too many course corrections in transit.

you could always just go slower in the first place if slowing down is the problem :p

>>10260569

>you could always just go slower in the first place if slowing down is the problem

Yes, you can (usually)but then what you're doing is sending a lander/orbiter anyway, which kinda defeats the purpose of deploying separte landers on the flyby (since there is no flyby), which is the idea I'm responding to. If you do that you simply end up with Rosetta mission. And it doesn't solve any of the problems of sending subprobes to other bodies from your main ship.
Launching at a slower speed also makes the mission significantly longer. I don't feel like doing the calculation now, but I guess a Hohman transfer to Pluto would take decades.

why is youtube so based

>>10260246
A rail-gun could work. Just needs electricity, and can reach extremely high velocities. A tiny probe accelerated into the other direction could go into orbit of larger objects like Pluto.

>>10259885
>100x400
pretty sure it'll be 200x200

>>10257068
Is a minigun the most effective weapon against ayy lmaos?

>>10260883
That's the radio nucleoid battery. Would fry the computer if it were near it.

>>10260028
Somebody run that AI upscaler on the image >>10247951

>>10260887
Radio-isotope nuclear decay power. Only for the best, non of this soiboi solar power bs

>>10260874
the weird aspect ratio might be because of how it scans

When do we see the new image today?

>>10262917
in 2.5 hours
see >>10259880

>>10262958
That’s in human hours I take it? Will the image be able to see objects about 157ish by 53 meters big?

5 min left

spotted

it begins

it's a snowman

>>10263200

nice

rotates every 15hr

Seeing a contact binary up close is pretty cool.

red

>>10263231
Neat

>>10260612
>decades
Hundreds of years.

>>10263252
>slopes
this is not a word I expected to see
what does it mean

The guy was saying that this binary form is more common among comets. Does that mean that the solar activity can influence how the planetary objects are made? And with that, doesn't this can turn into a strong evidence that the hypotetical Planet Nine cann't exist?

Shits frozen together

>>10263284
that and gravity. they collided at ~ 1 km/hr

Let's separate apples from oranges...

summer next year they propose to NASA a new flyby program to search for a 3rd flyby object

44 AU currently, extensions of kuiper belt go to 70AU so lots of stuff to find

>>10263252
HERTZIAN CONTACT MECHANICS!

3:1 size ratio between Ultima and Thule

It's weird that they don't use the probe to investigate what objects are nearby, you have to look after them here on Earth to find and then decide to send the probe there.

>>10263338
too much risk involved, and we already have long lists of cool stuff to visit anyways

>>10263338
>what objects are nearby
"Nearby" is a very relative term in space.

>>10263282
Solar activity is what forms the initial proto planetary material. The Kuiper belt must be filled with little protoplanetisimals (planet forming components that never made it)

>>10263361
>long lists of cool stuff

Like Haumea and other large TNOs

>>10263252
>touching spheres
Gay

>>10263456

klek, testicle rocks

>>10263361
This. The big problem they have with mission planning is deciding on one destination over all others.

>>10263338
The probe isn't as well endowed as HST and the like. It's useful for quick snapshots of stuff it flies by but it needs to get really close.

>>10263243

No, it's actually decades. A very approximate calculation gave me ~40 years and a quick Google search gave me 48 years for a Holman transfer to Pluto, which seems about right.

>>10263655
You are both wrong. There are two studies done for orbiters around KBOs with transit times of less than 20 years. There is one done by NASA and one by ESA which would get a small orbiter around Plut or another dwarf planet at similar distance in 15 years by using electrical propulsion via somithing like >1kW of RTG power.

>>10263655
>>10263781
>>10263243
Also Alan Stern and his team at SwRI have been working for a Pluto orbiter concept to be submited for the next decadal survey.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2018/10/25/a-pluto-orbiter-and-beyond/>>10263243
I can’t find the specific source but I remember it was reported that it would have a transit time of 7-8 years (which I have a hard time seeing how that can be done with RTG power). The sexy part is that it whoul leave the Pluto system after a few years via Charon gravity assist and flyby another kbo planetestimal and insert itself around another dwarf planet (I think Quaroar is the only one discovered with a diamater >1000km within somewhat proximity relative to Pluto).

>>10263781
Those would use gravity assists, not pure Hohmann transfers.

Before they send an orbiter to KBO they should place one around Neptune. Triton alone is worth that much.
The only alternative would be a Dawn-style mission with multiple orbiting stops along the way.

>>10263808

I absolutley agree they should place an orbiter around Neptune first. I think Stern knows that a Pluto orbiter is a pipe dream at this point, I think it’s unlikely we’ll se one before the 2040 and even that I think is pushing it.
At this point there is strong and urgent support among outer planets scientist for a dedicated orbiter for Neptune, given that you get extensive science for an Ice Giant and a Pluto-sized KBO with arguably comparable if not greater geological activity. You ar getting out the best of two worlds for the price of one flaghip mission.

The dilemma here is that such missions historically take 7 years from aproval to lauch pad, that is after the general iddea for what such a mission would look like, and the lauch window to Neptune closes in 2030. Assuming a green light in 2023, NASA should start to spend a few millions on this mission starting 2020, which from wha I see is doable albeit with a bit of a budget stretch, unless the worse happens and another change in administration comes and defunds planetary science.

If NASA does not get the ball rolling soon enough we will probably get a Uranus orbiter which has launch windoes available trough 2032(maybe 2034) which is not bad but at the same time I feel Neptune and Triton get you more for the money spent. A replica of New Horizons payload plus a magnetometer for at least 2 years in the neptunian system would actually generate science which would utterly dwarf what New Horizons has already acomplished (which is already monumental).

Also

>>10263808

>Those would use gravity assists, not pure Hohmann transfers.

Fair enough, my bad.

>>10263781

I never said it is impossible to get to Pluto faster, New Horizons took just 9 years, the 48 years is for a Hohman transfer, which is efficient but slow by design. You can do the calculation yourself quite easily, it's

pi x sqrt (( r1 + r2)^3) /(8GM))

Where r1 and r2 are the radii of your starting and target orbits, respectively, G is the gravitational constant and M is the mass of the Sun.
The semi-major axis of Pluto is 39 AU, so you can assume r1+r2 is 40 AU, which is circa 6*10^12 meters. GM is circa 1.3*10^20. Cube the first number, divide by the second number times eight, square root that and multiply by pi, you get 1.43x10^9 seconds, which is 45 years. These numbers are obciously very approximate, but the are not off by an order of magnitude, so it's neither 'centuries' nor a few years.
Of course, Hohman transfer is not the only way of getting to Pluto, only a complete dumbass would claim otherwise, given that New Horizons didn't take 40 years to get there.

god damnnit why can't everything be mars-distance away. It wouldn't be bad, but our mental passage of time isn't calibrate for that sort of thing.

Brian May's song
https://youtu.be/j3Jm5POCAj8

>>10260555
ch-cheked

>>10263268
Slope of the ground compared to the direction of gravity maybe?

>>10263268
>>10264583
it means that if you has some pebbles at the neck, they'd "roll" "up" the two spheres. sort of counterintuitive at first glance

>>10263878
I liked the idea of twin missions to both ice giants.

>>10264907
I would also love it bu it’s not going to happen.
Next mars rover launches in 2020, the Europa spacecraft in 2022-2025 and by 2026(though it could slip to 2028 IMO) they want to lanuch the mars sample return vehicle for the samples, there gathered by Mars 2020. Don’t even get me started with the Europa Lander.
There simply isn’t enough room in the budget for a dual ice giant mission within the next 10-15 years, which would cost at least 3billion$. Even getting a decent Neptune Orbiter off the ground by 2030 will prove challenging and that’s the best we can realistically hope for. There are other mission classes for lower cost missions and they should also have their place remain in the budget since it’s possible to get Enceladus or Titan oribters at 1billion$, which is better than waiting another generation for there to be funds for a Cassini 2.0.

There is the chance that at some point down the line congress will increase the planetary budget by 50% or more, bu I’m not betting on it.

RIP thread

>>10265317
Not so soon
But glad to have posted on this historic launch thread