Very impressive that this can be done and that it can be done to an object that we didn't even know existed when New Horizons was launched.
I hope New Horizons (and NASA) still have enough gas left to catch other opportunities like this as it continues out of the solar system.
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100 million miles to go now. lyrics
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The skill of the people who do these kinds of things is simply incredible. They provide cause for celebration of American ingenuity, technical prowess, and our spirit of exploration. It is worth remembering that they are government workers and government contractors.
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@MRod
But I think many at APL are permanent employees of Johns Hopkins.
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That may be so, but even then, a significant source of funding for APL/John Hopkins is the federal government.
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I'm surprised at the "artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passing by 2014 MU69", made by NASA/Johns Hopkins University. The proportions are all out of whack for a spacecraft approaching a 20 mile wide object from a distance of 2,200 miles.
The actual proportions would be like viewing a 20 mile wide object located in Los Angeles, from New York City. It would be a small itsy-bitsy thing way off in the distance.
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@W
But what if the itsy-bitsy thing is closer than the 20-mile-wide thing?
Much closer. WAY closer.
That is what the artist is showing us.
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@Robert Holmen The artist is showing us his or her fantasy of what the flyby will look like, from a third person perspective. This includes the New Horizons spacecraft, 2014 MU69 and perhaps another object that might be nearby. There is no way that a third person would ever seen the spacecraft and the object in the proportions suggested by that image.
I'm okay with artists renditions, but in this case we're getting the impression of an up-close and personal fly-by of the object. If this were product advertising we would be yelling about bait-and-switch advertising after the purchase.
My understanding of the fly-by is that the object will be pretty far away, and the resolution of the cameras will give an image of about (1,000) pixels wide. That will include the object plus all the black around it. Probably good enough to say 'Kilroy was here', but really not that great either.
Personally, I'd be more impressed with their navigation if they were able to crash the spacecraft into the object, or pass within a few hundred feet of it. That would be a much better test. There's still plenty of fuel and time to make this mid-course correction. Something like Ranger 9 when it returned pictures while crashing into the moon. The spacecraft is useless once this flyby is over, so why not go for the brass ring.
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"The proportions are all out of whack for a spacecraft approaching a 20 mile wide object from a distance of 2,200 miles."
Good point. The artist’s impression also shows a silhouette of the spacecraft itself in the upper right quadrant.
In fact, the spacecraft has a telescopic camera called the "LORRI" (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager). This paper has a detailed technical description:
Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager on New Horizons
A. F. Cheng et al
https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.4278
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Zowie! BlindStevie thinks that space travel is very interesting. Manned space travel is excessively costly, and difficult to justify, but spacecraft like New Horizons more than pay for themselves. Go APL.
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The men and women who make this possible are my heroes - twice over.
'Beyond the known world' indeed.
Starting with a desire to know the universe, and having the audacity to invent the means to decipher it, it renders most other professions comparatively mundane.
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