Posted on 04/16/2015 8:04:33 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell
The first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto, a dwarf planet in the solar system’s frozen backyard, is still three months away from a close encounter, but already in viewing range, newly released photos show.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
Jupiter's gravity assist kicked it up (by 9K) to 45,000+ mph.
30,000 mph relative to Pluto.
“As Ben Kenobi once said.... “That’s not a moon.”
Well, crickey, it is certainly not a knife
“There are...FIVE LIGHTS!”
Reminds me more of that time when Darmok and Gilard met at Tenagra
“Jupiter’s gravity assist kicked it up (by 9K) to 45,000+ mph.”
The interesting misconception about gravity boosts is people think it increases the velocity of the space ship. It does not increase the absolute speed, all acceleration occurs to change the direction of travel. The force of gravity definitely increases the absolute velocity as the space ship approaches the planet, but as the ship travels away from the planet gravity equally decelerates the ship. At the end the ship is traveling at the same velocity relative to some “fixed point” but since the direction has changed, relative to its target, as far as the target is concerned, suddenly their relative velocities have changed greatly.
Reminds me more of that time when Darmok and Gilard met at Tenagra
There are a lot of nerds on FR
What's sad is that I get both references. Both were excellent episodes IMO.
Where the walls fell.
I note that some folks are counting the blue as other spacial objects. I would caution slow going with that.
I use my 50x optical zoom on my camera to take shots of objects at night. One technique I use to expand the objects I can see in photos, is to bring more light to the photos.
I can multiply the light by thousands of times. This works very well, improving on a photo that may at first only reveal six objects, but when the light is multiplied there can be upwards of 30 objects.
There is a point where I cannot push the light up any farther, because I start getting anomalies. Those anomalies are generally blue. I’m not sure why, but that spectrum seems to be prominent.
This photo may have been pushed just over the limit, and those blue objects may be anomalies. If they were truly objects, we should see them as we see what we think to be the moon that is shown. They could be smaller, but they should still show up brighter if they were truly revealed in this photo.
There are supposed to be 4 smaller ‘moonlets’ besides Charon, orbiting Pluto. It’s probably them.....................
They didn't figure on or expect OBAMACARE.......................
While what you are saying does make a certain amount of sense, there is one thing that occurred to me. Why would NASA use these objects if not the increase speed? You actually gave the answer, but didn’t elaborate on it. I think it’s interesting, so I will.
When we send a vehicle out into deep space, we are trying to send it to a target object. That target object may be traveling horizontal to us. It may actually be coming in our direction. Using the sling-shot effect, can help us achieve the best angle for the approach. It’s an angle that we couldn’t obtain on a straight shot path from Earth to the object without expending far more energy than we have on board.
This is a way to achieve that without increasing the delivery systems (and I’m not even sure that could achieve what we need to), and allows us to cut cost as well.
Ha!
HCAmderson lives...
and
so doth Mark Twain..
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
And some may well be. If you look closely, there are blue objects in the top left quadrant relative to the planet and moon, and there are blue object below as sell.
There are at least eight objects. That’s why I suggest the blue spots may be anomalies. They can’t all be planets. If they were other spacial objects they would also be brighter.
I appreciate your response.
When the walls fell.
Actually, at the time of the launch the object is probably going away from us. So a straight line trajectory from earth includes the angular velocity of earth at the time of launch which unless the ship was launched at the perfect mathematical time, will not direct it in a vector that will intercept the target without burning a lot of fuel. But if you can use earths angular momentum and direct your craft to another object that will just happen to intercept your ship, then using small thrust manuevers you can redirect your ship to take advantage of a gravity well, to redirect your vector years after takeoff in a direction towards your goal with almost no fuel. The fuel use is trying to overcome earths angular velocity, which you get for free banking around a planet.
If they take some more pics, maybe they will show up better!.................
Yes I agree. I’m not a scientist or mathematician, but this is all very logical. That’s where I approach it from.
Lets hope so. I don’t mind being wrong. I just wanted folks to know about the blue spectrum dynamic I’ve run into, and how it might affect this photo.
Take care.
...........or they could be EYES looking back at US!...................
There you go. Heh heh heh...
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