Photos from Pluto

Big John wrote:
A country boy with an interest in space is wondering how long will it
take photos to get back to Earth from "New Horizons", once it arrives in
the Pluto neighborhood? I've read a lot of stuff about the flight, but
haven't seen that.

This is from the New Horizons press kit:

because New Horizons will be more than 3 billion miles from Earth and
radio signals will take more than four hours to reach the spacecraft,
it can send information at about 700 bits per second. It will take nine
months to send the full set of Pluto encounter science data back to
Earth.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/images/mainP...essKit1_06.pdf

Does that answer your question?

More info from the same reference:

The situation becomes much more challenging at Pluto, where the
downlink rate will range between 600 to 1,200 bits per second. At that
rate mission operators would need several hours to downlink even a
single image from New Horizons' long-range camera . . .

Pluto's orbit is fairly eccentric, but if you take the average 5.8x10^9
km, and the speed of light is 3x10^5 km/sec, then, it would take around
19000 seconds to get here (rounding to significant digits) or roughly
5 hours.

Ah! Ha!! Just what I was looking for!! The press kit!!!
Thanks so much! Answered all to my questions! - Approx. 4 hrs 25min, -
page34.

I guess I could have averaged all the times reported and gotten pretty
close. Hmmmm! Let's see, 44 hours,12 hours,6 hours, 5hrs 20 min-- naw,
that will still be way off!! At least a couple were close enough for
government work, i.e.about 4 and a half hours. Interesting how some
folks feel they just have to give an answer to any question, even if
they have no idea!! - and then show all the calculations as to how they
arrived at the wrong answer. Glad it wasn't important!!

Seems that whomever put this kit out also thinks New Horizons is going
to take some pictures (a rose by any other name --- images, pictures,
photos -- see page 34 and 35)

Thanks for all the responses - it's been fun. I hope I'm still around to
see the "pictures".

BJ


fgoodwin wrote:
Big John wrote:

A country boy with an interest in space is wondering how long will it
take photos to get back to Earth from "New Horizons", once it arrives in
the Pluto neighborhood? I've read a lot of stuff about the flight, but
haven't seen that.


This is from the New Horizons press kit:

because New Horizons will be more than 3 billion miles from Earth and
radio signals will take more than four hours to reach the spacecraft,
it can send information at about 700 bits per second. It will take nine
months to send the full set of Pluto encounter science data back to
Earth.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/images/mainP...essKit1_06.pdf

Does that answer your question?

Believe the press kit! My answer was back-of-the-envelope after a long night
working so apologies for dropping a decimal point. :-)

Cheers.

Ken

"Big John" wrote in message
m...
Ah! Ha!! Just what I was looking for!! The press kit!!!
Thanks so much! Answered all to my questions! - Approx. 4 hrs 25min, -
page34.

I guess I could have averaged all the times reported and gotten pretty
close. Hmmmm! Let's see, 44 hours,12 hours,6 hours, 5hrs 20 min-- naw,
that will still be way off!! At least a couple were close enough for
government work, i.e.about 4 and a half hours. Interesting how some
folks feel they just have to give an answer to any question, even if
they have no idea!! - and then show all the calculations as to how they
arrived at the wrong answer. Glad it wasn't important!!

Seems that whomever put this kit out also thinks New Horizons is going
to take some pictures (a rose by any other name --- images, pictures,
photos -- see page 34 and 35)

Thanks for all the responses - it's been fun. I hope I'm still around to
see the "pictures".

BJ


fgoodwin wrote:
Big John wrote:

A country boy with an interest in space is wondering how long will it
take photos to get back to Earth from "New Horizons", once it arrives in
the Pluto neighborhood? I've read a lot of stuff about the flight, but
haven't seen that.


This is from the New Horizons press kit:

because New Horizons will be more than 3 billion miles from Earth and
radio signals will take more than four hours to reach the spacecraft,
it can send information at about 700 bits per second. It will take nine
months to send the full set of Pluto encounter science data back to
Earth.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/images/mainP...essKit1_06.pdf

Does that answer your question?

Big John wrote:

I guess I could have averaged all the times reported and gotten pretty
close. Hmmmm! Let's see, 44 hours,12 hours,6 hours, 5hrs 20 min-- naw,
that will still be way off!! At least a couple were close enough for
government work, i.e.about 4 and a half hours. Interesting how some
folks feel they just have to give an answer to any question, even if
they have no idea!! - and then show all the calculations as to how they
arrived at the wrong answer. Glad it wasn't important!!

I'm sure all the respondents were trying to be helpful; I think the 44
hours was off by a decimal point.

"fgoodwin" wrote in message
oups.com...
Big John wrote:

I guess I could have averaged all the times reported and gotten pretty
close. Hmmmm! Let's see, 44 hours,12 hours,6 hours, 5hrs 20 min-- naw,
that will still be way off!! At least a couple were close enough for
government work, i.e.about 4 and a half hours. Interesting how some
folks feel they just have to give an answer to any question, even if
they have no idea!! - and then show all the calculations as to how they
arrived at the wrong answer. Glad it wasn't important!!

I'm sure all the respondents were trying to be helpful; I think the 44
hours was off by a decimal point.

Yep, comes from doing it in my head just before a meal - brain was already
out to lunch! :-)

Ken

"fgoodwin" wrote in message
ups.com...
More info from the same reference:

The situation becomes much more challenging at Pluto, where the
downlink rate will range between 600 to 1,200 bits per second. At that
rate mission operators would need several hours to downlink even a
single image from New Horizons' long-range camera . . .

Bah, I worked with modems slower than that. Ah, the good old days. :-)