SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:55AM
from the this-is-no-Mickey-Mouse-operation dept.
from the this-is-no-Mickey-Mouse-operation dept.
Emily Lakdawalla's blog on The Planetary Society has an article on the details of communicating with New Horizons.
Pluto is far away—very far away, more than 30 times Earth's distance from the Sun — so New Horizons' radio signal is weak. Weak signal means low data rates: at the moment, New Horizons can transmit at most 1 kilobit per second. (Note that spacecraft communications are typically measured in bits, not bytes; 1 kilobit is only 125 bytes.) Even at these low data rates, only the Deep Space Network's very largest, 70-meter dishes can detect New Horizons' faint signal.
The article goes into some of the tricks used to improve the data rates and keep within the spacecraft power budgets.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain
(Score: 5, Informative) by ah.clem on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:10AM
"...only the Deep Space Network's very largest, 70-meter dishes can detect New Horizons' faint signal."
The DSN is set up so that coverage is always available if they can get the bandwidth reserved; the dishes are spread out 120* around the world (California, Spain and Australia). An interesting side note is that all the 70 meter dishes in the DSN are being replaced with a local network of 4, 34 meter dishes that will all support X-band uplink and X and Ka-band downlink. The proposed date for the completed conversion is 2025. Folks, we truly do live in the future.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:21AM
I hope they don't just scrap them; they'd make great radio telescopes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @12:35PM
Radio telescopes? Yeah sure, but how about a parabolic solar death ray instead? Much more fun...
(Score: 2) by ah.clem on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:01PM
Sweet! That way, when Cleolanta of Ophiuchus or Ming the Merciless of Mongo show up trying to move in on our prime lunar real estate, we can just push the button and "Poof!". Rocky Jones and Flash Gordon can sleep in.