I had to start a thread with my username such as it is... 9 years, 3 billion miles, and some fantastic photos. What a great accomplishment!
It's wonderful we get to see this in our life time. Neat to see the photos especially the high resolution photo of the rocky icy terrain. Pluto is definitely a planet with its I think five moons satelliting around it. Quite interesting the lighter large heart shape on its surface. Can't wait to see the data and further photos to come over the months to come. Now we just have to do something amazing like land some humans on Mars or maybe even land a human on the moon.....oh wait a minute
I don't get why people dig their heels in about Pluto still being a planet. We discovered too many other large rocks out in the Kuiper Belt and it just makes more sense to call them all dwarf planets, with Pluto as their unofficial king. Science and exploration in action! It's exciting!
I read an interesting article a while back that proposed Venus may actually do better for people than Mars. The trick with Venus is that the habitable zone is actually in the clouds. Another "Win" for Star Wars! And i agree - Pluto should be a planet, if nothing more than for tradition sake. How many people get honorary degrees from universities they are totally unworthy of, except for tradition. Pluto can be an honorary planet...
Venus would be great to always have an aerial view. Downsides would be optional gas masks and 3000 sunblock also optional. Venus of course would prohibit war because it's the planet of love so not ideal for humans I just read an article that said when New Horizons left in 2006 Pluto was still an official planet. I graduated in the 1980s from art college. In recent years that college has become a university. Perhaps I better ask them for an honorary degree.
Was just listening to a podcast about how the probe has a 12 MHz CPU and a 1 kbit/sec data connection to Earth... with a round-trip ping of 9 hours, and a single day to collect Pluto data after 9 years getting there, as the fastest human-made object ever! Imagine the stress of troubleshooting it when the computer crashed a while ago.
I don't really have a horse in this race beyond thinking space is awesome and I wish we'd spend more money on stuff like THIS instead of whatever country we're drone striking this morning, but as a spectator sport people who have strong opinions regarding whether Pluto should or shouldn't be a planet seems pretty crazy to me. Arguing for the sake of arguing truly is what the internet is all about.
I think the whole thing is pretty neat. Now everyone go watch silly Kerbal Space Program videos (or better yet go play it! Or Simple Rockets if all you don't have a computer...)
Amazing what we've accomplished so far (e.g.- Pluto, probe on comet, etc). We all should be holding onto our seats for the next venture.
I love the disney character and now seriously i hope we're not waking up any giants which destroy earth
I got a great IMHO new avatar from Starts With a Bang website. Incorporates the planet and the Disney Character. Who would have known? Was anxious about seeing new photos today, but none so far. Apparently the probe is already more than 1,000,000 miles from Pluto already. Wish our freeways would tolerate that speed.
It's awesome, I didn't think I'd be able to experience seeing Pluto with that sort of clarity. Of course there's still people who think it's an Illuminati plot and that the Pluto photos are faked in a studio somewhere.