New Horizons: Last view of Pluto's spots

bbc ^ | Jonathan Amos

[Proud_texan]

A clear case of planet shaming.

[MNDude]

So we’ll never know what those darn spots are then. :(

[deoetdoctrinae]

I thought it was on the way back!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Lame explanation. New Horizons was definitely not on minimum energy trajectory. It also got a gravity boost from Jupiter that cut four years off the trip. Economics and reliability probably played a big role in the mission planning. A faster trajectory costs more fuel, but is over sooner, so less time for instruments and computers to fail.

[MeshugeMikey]

Thanks for the heads zup!

“Come Tuesday, it will be grabbing shots from an altitude of just 12,500km.”

Im going to wait for the higher resolution shots form Tuesdaty

Lets hope Kim Jung Un-Hinged doesn’t HACK it before then

[GeronL]

lol

North Korea takes over the deep space probe

That would be a story

[MeshugeMikey]

Who could ever be More Spaced out than The Great Leader Kim Jung Un-Hinged??

[fhayek]

I doff my cap.

[MNDude]

“And we’re still collecting data from it, almost on a daily basis.”

Are you serious?? Sounds impossible!

[Moonman62]

You can check here. Every now and then the Voyagers will show up. Maybe not now, because New Horizons is a big priority.

http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin.