Posted on 06/14/2015 6:05:27 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
A capture trajectory probably would have taken too long. It’s already been flying for 9.5 years, and without a gravity boost from Jupiter it would have taken another three. Carrying enough fuel to “deorbit” probably would have required jettisoning 3/4’s of the instrumentation. New Horizons is definitely a compromise.
It will take months to send back all the data it collects. The trade off between comms bandwidth and instrumentation favored instrumentation (with on-board storage). Same problem, bigger antenna, more powerful transmitter, would have displaced other instrumentation. Storage is cheap, compared to bandwidth.
b ttt
If so they need to change the definition of “planet” then.
Ceres was originally classified as a planet, as was Vesta. When a slew of other objects were found in similar orbits between Mars and Jupiter, they and their cohort were demoted from “planet” to “asteroid”, a term originally suggested by William Herschel.
Sounds like fun!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.