Send your name to Pluto 326
hatredman writes "NASA is preparing to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. It will be the first earth device to get intimate with the icy planet. And you can be there too - or, at least, your name. NASA is asking everyone to send them their names, which will be attached in the space device. The New Horizons probe will be launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, in the outskirts of the Solar System. It is expected that the probe will return to earth in approximately 50 thousand years."
Re:Kinda depressing (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Kinda depressing (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the trip to Pluto is going to take a couple of years, but not that much - you're certainly going to see it in your lifetime. Well, assuming you don't die first (but that goes without saying).
Disk Life Span? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:How will the probe come back? (Score:5, Informative)
here's the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
Unless it has enough energy to leave the system, anything launched will eventually (after a long enough time) to Earth.
Re:How will the probe come back? (Score:3, Informative)
The probe only needs to attain escape velocity of Earth's gravity to get out of orbit. It doesn't need to leave the system. It's quite possible for the probe to get captured by another planet, or by the Sun. At a certain point, the gravitational force exerted by Earth will be far less than that of closer and more massive planets such as Jupiter.
In truth, it is likely that the probe will never return to Earth, unless it has some means of propulsion and control to bring it back.
More likely to turn into a small comet or somesuch.
Mods, since when is anything that points to Wikipedia considered informative, even when it doesn't apply to the article?
Re:Binary CD? (Score:3, Informative)
Um, am I the only one wondering what the point of sending a CD is? Apart from the "prestiege" for the people on said CD, if any intelligent life picks it up, they're not exactly going to be able to read it are they?
Who said anything about intelligent life finding it? Since the article summary says it may return near earth in 50,000 years it's not leaving the solar system. The only intelligent life that might possibly find it is us in 50,000 years. Though I doubt any information will still be readable after such a long period of time.
The whole point is to get some positive PR for Nasa. Letting people put their name on a CD that's going to Pluto (or really going near Pluto) gives them a small piece of the experience. That's the point.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:2, Informative)
Don't be so impatient:
Pluto Nium 242177 2005-08-29 17:40:47
PLUTO NIUM 243382 2005-08-29 17:51:43
Pluto Nium 244551 2005-08-29 17:59:24
Re:Binary CD? (Score:1, Informative)
sheesh!
The point is... (Score:3, Informative)
The point of NASA doing this is not to send your name to aliens, and it's not to send your name to archaeologists 50,000 years in the future. They're doing it to make you feel like a part of you is on that probe, that a part of you is being launched into the depths of the solar system, exploring, etc. It's a discovery thing. It's also a marketing thing, and for what you get (a whole bunch of kids saying, cool), it's pretty cheap.
Since it's unlikely that it'll be picked up by aliens or archaeologists, it doesn't really matter what form the names take. Of course, the weight of the probe is finely tuned, so something light is preferable. Kids understand what a CD is, so that's a good choice.
NASA did a similar thing for the Deep Impact probe - collected names and included them on the impactor. Definitely no chance of that being picked up by aliens, but there's something cool about having your name on a big chunk of metal that will smash into a comet on the 4th of July (more marketing there).
We completed an RFP in '97.. (Score:3, Informative)
Being the only EE in the class, it fell to me to design the complete communications system for it.
I wish I had an electronic document of the whole thing, it makes for fascinating reading. I just pulled it out of my closet to compare notes after reading about the mission. Our RFP weighs in at 175+ pages.
Our proposal is very close on several key design elements. We proposed a 452kg spacecraft - damn close to the final weight. I see that the actual mission calls for a 2.1m dish, which is close the 2m dish I proposed using a total of 82W DC (including transponders, SSPA, etc). We designed the mission using a Delta rocket to lower the cost and achieve a decent altitude.
We figured a total of 200MB of compressed science data would need to be transmitted back to complete the objectives at the time. They don't seem to have changed much, so that means a minimum data rate of 514bps is required to transmit the data to one DSN over 6 months. Using two 34 dishes of the DSN gets an average rate of about 900bps.
In other words, I'm thrilled our original design has held up. We actually proposed a NSTAR ion engine rather than LTG's, but it's great NASA went with the LTG. You get a shitload more power, and that's awesome. Especially considering they missed the launch window for an ion engine.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:2, Informative)