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new horizons is exiting the solar system without a golden record or a golden plaque. seems like a waste of a very unique opportunity.
new horizons is exiting the solar system without a golden record or a golden plaque. seems like a waste of a very unique opportunity.
For the next 20-30k years, the Sun will be the closest star to this spacecraft. Any alien civilization capable of interstellar travel would probably be intelligent enough to reckon that the probe, if chanced upon within that timeframe, would originate from Sun and might pop over for a look. Beyond that timeframe, I'm not so sure a record would be in playable condition. Furthermore, if interstellar travel were actuall…
"Perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them.
Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all human beings will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.
Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on."
- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Wanderers: https://vimeo.com/108650530
Casino's Grand Finale ( for JPL) : https://vimeo.com/210782375
new horizons is exiting the solar system without a golden record or a golden plaque. seems like a waste of a very unique opportunity.
I'm not convinced such artifacts add anything of significant probable value over what's already implied by a sophisticated space probe of obviously unnatural origin, should it be discovered intact by aliens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no objection at all to spending one's own money or money given with consent. Of course, some of the money SpaceX spends isn't given with consent (like NASA).
It sounds like you just don't like taxes? I'm not sure what this has to do specifically with space? Nobody personally signs off on everything their tax dollars are spent on.
I found this thread by Alex Parker very informative and fascinating. https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674
I second on the fascinating and informative And that was only the beginning of that mission
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't found a definitive 'no' but with a bit of quick googling - the current mission extension runs until (at least) 2021 and there is very little onboard fuel for significant course updates. Some of the other potential targets were in fact ruled out by the selection of Ultima Thule. The extended mission for New Horizons calls for the spacecraft to conduct observations of, and look for ring systems around, betwee…
I'm curious what is the reason to think there would be ring systems around these objects? Aren't rings usually associated with planets much larger than earth, whereas these objects are much smaller?
To be clear, something that "doesn't last long" on an astronomical timescale could still quite happily exist stably for several dozen human lifetimes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not convinced such artifacts add anything of significant probable value over what's already implied by a sophisticated space probe of obviously unnatural origin, should it be discovered intact by aliens.
the biology, origin and culture of who built it might be interesting.
The probe itself is interesting enough, and there are many reasons to be reserved about how much self-describing information we voluntarily share with completely unknown aliens.
I personally find comfort in knowing there's nearly zero possibility of anything intelligent finding voyager intact.
I found this thread by Alex Parker very informative and fascinating. https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674
Not sure why it wasn't more prominent, but for anyone else like that was wondering, "reaches" "zips by" and the other adjectives are indicating a distance of 2,200 miles. As a computer vision/imaging person, that's a pretty far look for a 75mm (~3 inch) mirror. It's like trying to take a picture of the Empire State building in NYC from Las Vegas with a tripod telescope.
LORRI has a 8" primary mirror, not 3. Ralph has a 75mm mirror, but that's the secondary telescope; it does multispectral photography (6 bands) and infrared spectrometry. Even with such a small primary mirror, New Horizons has a number of advantages. First, Ultima Thule is larger than Manhattan. Not exactly large, but certainly bigger than the Empire State Building. Second, the mount is incredibly stable. There are ba…