New Horizons - misja rozszerzona

[Orionid]

New Horizons Spacecraft Homing in on Kuiper Belt Target
December 31, 2018


Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Just over 24 hours before its closest approach to Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule, the New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first images that begin to reveal Ultima's shape. The original images have a pixel size of 6 miles (10 kilometers), not much smaller than Ultima's estimated size of 20 miles (30 kilometers), so Ultima is only about 3 pixels across (left panel). However, image-sharpening techniques combining multiple images show that it is elongated, perhaps twice as long as it is wide (right panel). This shape roughly matches the outline of Ultima's shadow that was seen in observations of the object passing in front of a star made from Argentina in 2017 and Senegal in 2018.

Much more detailed images, and other kinds of data, will be gathered today and tomorrow as New Horizons speeds towards its closest approach to Ultima at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1. A small sample of these images and other data will be returned to Earth in the next few days, though it will take about 20 months to downlink the full data set.

New Horizons was approximately 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) from Ultima when this image was taken on Dec. 30, 2018.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20181231

[Orionid]

New Horizons ready for Ultima Thule flyby
by Jeff Foust — December 30, 2018


Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, discusses the upcoming flyby at a Dec. 30 briefing at APL. Credit: SpaceNews/Jeff Foust

(...) The biggest challenge in the days leading up to the flyby have not been technical but instead bureaucratic. The partial government shutdown that started Dec. 22 when funding lapsed for some government agencies, including NASA, threw a wrench into plans developed months earlier for publicizing the event. NASA’s shutdown plan states that the agency’s website and social media will not be updated during the shutdown, and that NASA Television will also be offline.

However, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Dec. 27 that NASA TV and social media accounts would continue to operate during the flyby because the contract supporting that work was “forward funded” prior to the shutdown. APL also made plans to broadcast briefings about the flyby on its own social media accounts and website.

Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons, said Dec. 30 that because of the shutdown NASA officials who previously planned to attend the flyby can’t do so in an official capacity, including appearing at media events or making statements. “Other than that we are essentially unaffected,” he said, adding that those officials are welcome to attend the flyby events as private citizens.

A few science team members who are NASA civil servants had to get exceptions from the furlough that affects about 95 percent the agency’s workforce “because this is a critical operation,” Stern said.

Among them was Moore, who said he and another Ames scientist, Dale Cruikshank, needed to “deal with the bureaucracy” in order to get excepted from the furlough and permission to travel to APL for the flyby. “We both spent a day filling out paperwork and dealing with the system,” he said. (...)

https://spacenews.com/new-horizons-ready-for-ultima-thule-flyby/

[ekoplaneta]

Witamy w Nowym 2019 Roku!!!  B-) Oby się nam wszystkie kosmiczne misje udały!!!! A kolejny rok zapowiada się jeszcze ciekawiej!!!! 

[Hiroshima]

Witam wszystkich na forum, 30 lat temu dostałem pierwszy teleskop na komunię, dziś wszystkim tłumaczyłem co się dzieje, kilka osób solidnie uświadomiłem, z trudem, ale chyba pójdę na trochę spać

[Orionid]

O 6:33 CET sonda znalazła się w minimalnej odległości od Utlima Thule. Trwa zbieranie danych przez NH.
Już ponad  160268 km za 2014 MU69.

With a festive countdown -- the second in 33 minutes after the celebration of the start of 2019 on the U.S. East Coast -- time of the New Horizons spacecraft's closest approach to Ultima Thule has passed.

The plutonium-powered spacecraft was aiming for a point around 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers from Ultima Thule -- officially named 2014 MU69 -- and at last report New Horizons was right on course.

The probe's telescopic camera, named LORRI, was programmed to take around 1,500 photos during the encounter sequence, the busiest part of which was expected to last just a couple of hours.

New Horizons's color camera, particles and solar wind instruments, and ultraviolet spectrometer were also programmed to observe Ultima Thule.

Because of the uncertainty in Ultima Thule's exact position, the instruments were programmed to scan across swaths of space to ensure the spacecraft captures color and grayscale imagery of the object, the most distant planetary body ever explored up-close.

The spacecraft's rocket thrusters were to fire to turn the probe and point its camera and instruments in the right direction throughout the encounter.

In about four hours, New Horizons will turn its 6.9-foot (2.1-meter) antenna back toward Earth and broadcast a "phone home" message, which will be received via a 230-foot (70-meter) dish at NASA's Deep Space Network station in Madrid at around 10:29 a.m. EST (1529 GMT).

It takes about 6 hours and 8 minutes for radio signals to traverse the gulf of space between Ultima Thule and Earth, a distance of about 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers).

At that time, mission controllers here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, expect to know whether New Horizons completed the flyby successfully, and if it captured the planned data and imagery.

New Horizons is expected to collect and store around 7 gigabytes of data during the flyby sequence, then transmit the information back to Earth at a speed of about 1,000 bits per second off-and-on over the next 20 months.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/30/new-horizons-ultima-thule-mission-status-center/

[Orionid]

Do 16:29 CET musimy jeszcze poczekać na sygnał o , miejmy nadzieję, udanym przelocie.
Najprawdopodobniej jest to najważniejsze astronautyczne wydarzenie 2019 roku.
Od Apollo do New Horizons i dalej 

Ciekawa zbieżność: Alan Stern  liczy tyle lat co epoka kosmiczna
https://www.nasa.gov/ames/ocs/2016-summer-series/alan-stern
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Stern
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/36/alan-stern/

 From the Associate Administrator: Go New Horizons!
December 31, 2018

In just a handful of hours, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will perform the furthest encounter of an object in our solar system. On Jan. 1 at 12:33 a.m., New Horizons is set to fly by 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, and collect images and scientific data to beam back to Earth. Ultima orbits the Sun from a vast region of icy and rocky bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Studying this primitive world—which has been around, unaltered, since the beginning of the solar system—will provide us with vital insights into the origins and evolution of our celestial neighborhood.

Below is a message from Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Missions Directorate, to Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Alan – as you know, we are on [government] shutdown, and I am unable to contribute to this historic event like I intended to. I will be sure to be there as a guest with my family! Here is why.

I think it is fitting that this Ultima Thule [flyby] is at the interface of the 60th anniversary of Explorer 1 in 2018 and the 50th of Apollo 11 in 2019. To me, this milestone of New Horizons is full of everything NASA and NASA Science is all about. It is about boundless aspiration and hope that are at the inception of exploration. It is about innovation and perseverance to actually create the success, by an amazing team that transcends what is reasonably expected or even what seems possible initially. And then, it is about surprise and transformative learning that has been at the heart of NASA and NASA Science and Exploration during the past 5-6 decades. The Ultima Thule flyby has all of these!

For all of that, I wish you and the team the best of luck! We at NASA Science are incredibly proud of you and your team - both the science and engineering teams – and can't wait for the surprises that will be uncovered during the next hours and days.

Go New Horizons! Go Ultima Thule!

Go Exploration – Forever!

Thomas

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20181231-1

[Orionid]

Jim Bridenstine @JimBridenstine  4 godziny temu

Happy New Year! @NASANewHorizons made its flyby of #UltimaThule at 12:33am ET. We’ll be live at 9:45am ET as we await the confirmation signal from the spacecraft. See you in the morning!

https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1079976412856098816

[kanarkusmaximus]

Czekamy na nasze popołudnie na sygnał!

[Limax7]

A więc konferencja od 15:45 naszego czasu i liczę na to że sonda bezpiecznie i udanie dokonała historycznego przelotu obok Ultima Thule

i następna ważna konferencja dziś od 17:30 naszego czasu !


i jeszcze ważna rzecz, zdjęcia zostaną przesłane
ok 18:00-19:00 ET dziś (tj. 0:00-1:00 CET) oraz
ok 0:00 ET 2 stycznia (tj. 6:00 CET) oraz
ok 12:00 ET 2 stycznia (tj. 18:00 CET)

[kanarkusmaximus]

Konferencja chyba zacznie się o 16:15 CET. Tak czy inaczej - to będzie już zaraz !

[Limax7]

Konferencja chyba zacznie się o 16:15 CET. Tak czy inaczej - to będzie już zaraz !

Tak. Troszkę zmienili grafik. Ciekawe czy pokażą choć kilka pikseli hihi

[ekoplaneta]

Czekamy! Konfa już za 15 minut!   

[artpoz]

Jaki adres konferencji? Nasa TV?

[ktos]

Widzę, że największa antena DSN w Madrycie jest już ustawiona na NH i czeka na dane.. ale póki co cisza.

[kanarkusmaximus]

Jaki adres konferencji? Nasa TV?

Tak NASA TV. Właśnie się zaczyna!