Today the station New Horizons Pluto will start taking pictures

Space Station New Horizons, go with the Earth to Pluto, January 19, 2006, today begins to photograph the planetoid and the surrounding area. Earlier machine is already out of hibernation , and headed for the rapprochement with the dwarf planet.

The closest approach to Pluto will be achieved on July 14 this year. But New Horizons will send pictures of Pluto long before this deadline. It is worth noting that the tool station comprises seven scientific instruments: two infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, two additional spectrometer, a small color camera and a telescopic camera with high resolution, plus cosmic dust detector.

Конфигурация station includes a 32-bit processor Mongoose, operating at a frequency of 12 MHz. This chip is a close relative MIPS R3000 - chip, which is installed in particular in the Sony PlayStation.



To write data from the satellite has 8 GB of flash memory. The memory block is divided into two parts, the second part is recorded backup image received by the station. The housing of the satellite and all the sensitive instruments are protected from the radiation. Istochnkiom supply is termoelektrochesky generator that runs on plutonium radioisotopes.

It is worth noting that for transmission home probe will use a very weak link, the bandwidth of which is only 700 bits per second. Time lag when "communion" with the probe is more than 4 hours. Estimated to NASA, to download the entire archive of photos that will be received probe, scientists need more than 9 months.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/244230/