Added 1 new A* page:As I write this, NASA's New Horizons probe is just two hours away from its flyby of what was once known as The Ninth Planet: Pluto! Although as a matter of interesting trivial fact, "Ninth Planet" has meant a lot of different things, at different times, and maybe depending on who you ask! Check out this copypasta from Wikipedia:
Ninth planet may refer to:- Pluto, considered to be the ninth planet from its discovery in 1930 until its reclassification as a dwarf planet in 2006; still considered a planet by some scientists
- Neptune, the ninth-closest planet from the Sun from 1979 to 1999 (with Pluto then considered the eighth-closest planet from the Sun)
- The asteroid 2 Pallas, considered to be the ninth planet in chronological discovery order from 1802 until its reclassification as a minor planet in the 1850s
- Jupiter, considered the ninth-closest planet from the Sun from 1807 to 1845 as a result of the discovery of minor planets
- Planet X, various hypothetical planets beyond Neptune
|
But back to Pluto, which will always be The Ninth Planet as far as I'm concerned! : P NASA has a video-or-app-based simulation showing what New Horizons will be busy doing during its all-important flyby (it's only taken 9.5 years of flying faster than any other spacecraft to get there!). Those of us who just want to see the pretty pictures will be most interested in those, of course. You can see on NASA's Deep Space Network Now page just what deep space antennae are communicating with which spacecraft; New Horizons has a normal transmission rate maximum of just 1 KB/second, meaning it takes about 42 minutes just to send back a single photo! And that's after the five hours it takes for the signal to get from Pluto to Earth! Then there's probably decoding, processing, and whatnot... But who knows, maybe by some time today (Tuesday) we'll be able to see the first razor-sharp photos of Pluto, ever! !! It might be a day or so more than that though for all I know. And this is assuming that the flyby goes as planned. : )) Go New Horizons!
|
