Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday August 30 2018, @11:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-closer-while-far-away dept.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has imaged 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, from about 172 million kilometers away:

Mission team members were thrilled – if not a little surprised – that New Horizons' telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was able to see the small, dim object while still more than 100 million miles away, and against a dense background of stars. Taken Aug. 16 and transmitted home through NASA's Deep Space Network over the following days, the set of 48 images marked the team's first attempt to find Ultima with the spacecraft's own cameras.

[...] This first detection is important because the observations New Horizons makes of Ultima over the next four months will help the mission team refine the spacecraft's course toward a closest approach to Ultima, at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, 2019. That Ultima was where mission scientists expected it to be – in precisely the spot they predicted, using data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope – indicates the team already has a good idea of Ultima's orbit.

Meanwhile, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is approaching 101955 Bennu, and has taken a series of images from a distance of about 2.2 million kilometers:

After arrival at Bennu, the spacecraft will spend the first month performing flybys of Bennu's north pole, equator and south pole, at distances ranging between 11.8 and 4.4 miles (19 and 7 km) from the asteroid. These maneuvers will allow for the first direct measurement of Bennu's mass as well as close-up observations of the surface. These trajectories will also provide the mission's navigation team with experience navigating near the asteroid.

"Bennu's low gravity provides a unique challenge for the mission," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "At roughly 0.3 miles [500 meters] in diameter, Bennu will be the smallest object that any spacecraft has ever orbited."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:29AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:29AM (#728647)

    My college roommate used to play video games all day. One was a civ type game that allowed you to play various species. I've always wondered if sentience had developed earlier on Earth, and if it did, would a technological civilization from a hundred million years ago be visible in the geological record. The answer is no, from what little I've read on the subject. But it's an interesting question.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:31AM (#728649)

    PS, we were physics majors so

    ...forgot about orbital perturbations...

    is one of the dumber things that I've read.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Friday August 31 2018, @03:19PM

    by Freeman (732) on Friday August 31 2018, @03:19PM (#728778) Journal

    Civ type game that allowed you to play various species is actually a fairly small group of games. I'm going with, Master of Magic, or perhaps one of the Age of Wonders series of games (spiritual successor to Master of Magic). Unless he was actually just playing a Civ Mod. It could be a really vague statement on your part and you actually meant something like Master of Orion.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"