New Horizons

[VK5ZD]

Not quite an amateur satellite, but, for those that are (a) interested and (b) don't already know, the New Horizons spacecraft is due for it's Pluto fly-by in a little under 2 days from now.

Details on the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newh ... index.html

Received signal at Canberra DSN is about -155dbm.

[VK2AVR]

Watching this mission with great interest, it has already turned up some fascinating photos.

In half an hour NH will be less than 1 million miles from Pluto (for those still stuck in the dark ages of imperial measurements).

During the flyby we won't have much in the way of comms/pictures because NH has to turn its antenna away from Earth to use its sensors/cameras. The craft has 8GB of storage so once the flyby sequence is completed it will turn back to us and begin the "great download" - at 1kbit per second (125 bytes per second) it will take a while!! (Apparently NH has dual transmitters so it may be able to transmit at a blistering 250bytes/sec..)

[VK2AVR]

"Officially" less than 1 million miles from Pluto

[VK5ZD]

The craft has 8GB of storage so once the flyby sequence is completed it will turn back to us and begin the "great download" - at 1kbit per second (125 bytes per second) it will take a while!! (Apparently NH has dual transmitters so it may be able to transmit at a blistering 250bytes/sec..)

One of the web pages (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/New ... e=20150414) reckons it will take 16 months to transmit all the data after the Pluto closest approach.

I can just imagine all transmissions stopping and, while everyone on earth is scratching their heads any wondering what happened, there's a message on a little screen in the spacecraft saying "Error reading memory location xyx. Press any key to continue."

[VK5APN]

Some more info for those interested

Regards

Wayne