Posted on 01/02/2019 1:24:00 PM PST by Simon Green
Humanity has captured its first clear look at an object in the faraway Kuiper Belt.
NASA revealed the first images and science data from this week's historic flyby in a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Far from the blurry 'bowling pin' we saw with New Horizons' first look when it beamed its signal home early morning on January 1, the new images reveal Ultima Thule is snowman-shaped red world with two distinct lobes - one stacked atop the other.
This arrangement is what's known as a contact binary, the experts say – and, it’s now the first a spacecraft has ever explored.
Photographing Ultima Thule – and traveling more than four billion miles through space to get there – is a ‘technical success beyond anything ever attempted before in spaceflight,’ Principal Investigator Alan Stern said in a press conference Wednesday.
'It's really only the size of Washington D.C., and about as reflective as garden variety dirt,' Stern explained, noting that the object wasn't even known to the world prior to the summer of 2014.
'We were ultimately chasing it down in the dark at 32,000 miles per hour.'
The best images of the new batch were captured when New Horizons was about 17,000 miles (27, 000 kilometers) from Ultima Thule.
And, the pictures will only get better from here.
The scientists say the two lobes of Ultima Thule came together in a 'gentle' accretion process, with two objects bound together by each other's gravity.
The primitive world was 'born' this way, and did not evolve or deform through external processes to take on the strange shape, the team explains.
'New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system,'said Jeff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team lead.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Only if the work was done by Beta Reticuli Welder's Local 384 ;-)
I guess they didn't get the memo telling them they can't do it.
much ado
It’s...
This new learning amazes me Sir Bedevere. Explain to me again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Well according to flat earthers they're all in on it. Or else they're spending billions of dollars on satellites that NASA fakes putting into space and then somehow tricks everyone into thinking they're getting satellite data from satellites that are sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
Your interpretation of what is said is not a valid interpretation of what is on the video.
From your previous post:
We have not solved the problem of getting through the Van Allen radiation belts that kill living beings.We have not solved the problem of getting through the thermosphere whose temperatures are significantly higher than needed to melt the metals in the spacecraft.
Both of the above statements are incorrect. The Van Allen radiation belts can damage and kill living things, if the living things are exposed to the radiation for a long enough period, without shielding. There are ways to reduce the exposure time, and to place the orbit through the belts where there is the least amount of radiation.
The temperature in the upper atmosphere is not hot enough to melt common metals. It is movement through the atmosphere that produces the heat. The area you are probably thinking about is called the thermosphere. That is generally the region from about 90 km above the surface to 500-1000 km above the surface. The temperatures there are high because the molecules there are moving fast. But they are relatively far apart. The pressure of air in that area is considered a very hard vacuum on Earth. While the molecules of air there are hot in the higher levels, there are very few of them, so they have almost no ability to heat metal in that area.
At 100km, the density of the atmosphere is so low that molecules do not reliably collide with each other. The equivalent pressure would be about .00032 millibars. Pressure at sea level is about 1013 millibars, on average. At 100 km, the temperature, as such is about a -80 degrees Centigrade. The temperature goes up as you go higher, but the number of molecules are so few, it would not heat a thermometer in the area. The temperatures are calculated from the theoretical temperatures of molecules moving at the velocities those molecules are moving.
As we have the pressure at 100 km, at .00032 millibars, and the pressure at the surface, at 1013 millibars, we can calculate the rough density at 100 km height is about .000000316 of that at the surface. That is 3.16 ten millionths of what it is at the surface. The volume of a car is about 5 cubic meters. That amount of air at 100 km up, when compressed to the pressure at the surface, would fill a sphere 1.45 centimeters, or about .57 inches in diameter. The density of the thermosphere drops off very rapidly as you go higher where the high "temperatures" are. Here is a link explaining both problems, and how they were solved.
I have good friends who believe as you do. Perhaps I have beliefs that are incorrect as well. I do not worry about it unless my friends try to convince me to make critical decisions based on a poor interpretation of data.
Sorry about the long post, but it is an area I have had some professional training and expertise in.
ROFL!!!
NASA doesn't launch anything. ULA, and SpaceX, and Roscosmos, and Arianespace, and ISRO, and JAXA and ... launch rockets. NASA just hitches a ride.
Launch Schedule for this year (2019).
Gentlemen (I assume),
In the NASA produced video, the NASA engineer, referring to the Van Allen radiation belts, clearly states “we must solve this challenge *before* we send people through this region of space”
Here it is, queued up for you to the time marker where he makes the statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O5dPsu66Kw&feature=youtu.be&t=217
This video is at least as recent as the conception of the Orion project. That means within the last few years.
Apparently, this NASA engineer is not aware of the Apollo missions, and is not aware of any solutions to the problems that the Van Allen radiation belts pose.
Stick to the facts, gentlemen. Avoid name calling. Act like rational grown ups.
My supposition is that NASA is lying to us.
I collect glassware that is called Ultima Thule!
Again you've taken ONE line out of context. Yet you ignore the hundreds and hundreds of videos, documents, data and various other proofs that we HAVE flown through and PAST the Van Allen belts. You also ignore the thousands of evidences that the most dangerous parts of the belt can be and often are avoided.
For example this article from Forbes contradicts your "theory" that the belts are an impassable barrier to humans which prevents us from going into space.
If you're religious you're LYING and dishonest if you latch on to ONE sentence to prove your point and disregard or ignore a MOUNTAIN of evidence that contradicts you.
You're a dishonest person AND a bad scientist. That's not an attack. That's what it boils down to by your actions.
DouglasKC,
In your rush to answer, you have not taken the time to think. The following two statements are NOT contradictory:
“Your whole premise is that NASA is faking all the space stuff. And then you go and say that NASA is admitting we can’t go into space.”
The launches are real. The “space” crafts go up, over, out of sight, and then down into the ocean. How convenient.
After that, it is all CGI.
ARE YOU AWARE THAT THE NEW HORIZONS SPACECRAFT IS UNMANNED????
Now you're blathering about manned spaceflight. Your current drivel is irrelevant to your original false claim about an UNMANNED mission.
Do at least try to stay on topic.
Apparently, this NASA engineer is not aware of the Apollo missions, and is not aware of any solutions to the problems that the Van Allen radiation belts pose.
Clearly. You, also, are ignorant of these things. And you have yet to show how they are in any way relevant to an UNMANNED spaceflight mission.
I see three possibilities, here:
1) TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed knows that his/her/its claims about spaceflight being faked are wrong, but posts them anyway. In this case, TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed is a liar.
2) TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed is grossly, and willfully, ignorant regarding the reality of spaceflight both manned and unmanned. He/she/it consistently ignores correction and refuses to answer (or attempt to answer) questions. This certainly calls his/her/its "good faith" into question.
3) TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed is a 'bot. In many way, it acts like one. It rather reminds me of an "ELIZA" program.
Quit lying.
Oh. So they have the capability to launch things but then they just scuttle it and waste billions of dollars to perpetuate a scan. EVERY country that has space capability does this too. That's a pretty expensive and unworkable answer to support your crazy conspiracy theory.
You have ZERO proof. Zero evidence. Zero authority. Everything you know you've gotten from conspiracy videos on the internet that you blindly swallow and accept.
On the contrary there are literally hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who are involved with space flight at various agencies in different countries ALL OVER the world. Yet you postulate that this giant conspiracy exists with ZERO people involved ever spilling the beans.
Dude, you have got to pull your head out. You've been manipulated into believing a complete lie. WE are not the ones being fooled. It's you. You're all worked up over some crazy conspiracy. THAT is Satanic.
Well said. And I hadn't thought about it that way, before. Someone once identified satan as the "Father of Lies". I'm inclined to take that Person's description of satan as Gospel Truth.
Call it Snowman.
I guess not as the snowflakes will be upset.
Rational adults don't blindly believe youtube videos over the huge bank of historial evidence that we did overcome the issues (and non-issue) you raised.
Yeah, because we had such superb CGI in 1969.
Do you realize just how stupid your statement is?
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