Station New Horizons begin transmitting the collected data to Earth

Interplanetary Space Station New Horizons начала transfer all accumulated in the last months of data back to Earth. In the digital media system is now several gigabytes of data transfer are on so remote from the New Horizons object, like the Earth, is not so simple. However, on Saturday, September 5, the scientists began to receive information at the same time for a total load of all these digital treasures must be about a year.

New Horizons not only stores digital images of Pluto and other objects, and data monitoring of the cosmos, the planets and planetoids that were collected scientific equipment station. Scientists now have only 5% of the data stored aboard the probe, and what is left - it is very valuable information, data sets, high-resolution images, data about the atmosphere of Pluto and its moons.

To cover the distance from the Earth to the New Horizons radio signal requires 4, 5 hours.

The objective of the station was to collect the maximum amount of data in the shortest time (Pluto flyby was not such a long). Therefore, during the information-gathering station aired a minimum of data, leaving the rest "for later". Apart from a few shots, the station still gave a small amount of information about high-energy particles, solar wind and cosmic dust. Now began the active phase of the data on the Deep Space Network (DSN), an array of antennas NASA, who also used to work with other missions, including the "Voyager".

Naturally, the data rate is minimal, and is currently 1-4 Kbps. The speed depends, including on which DSN-antenna receives the information.

"The mission of New Horizons require patience for many years, but received a small amount of data from the station, we realized that the wait was worth it", - said one of the members of the project team.

Now the team will continue to upload new web, camera raw tools Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). Photos can be viewed here .



Transferring data from New Horizons to Earth is done by antennas DSN. The photographs show the antenna, located in Spain, the USA and Australia.

Now the unit continues to move away from Pluto, and scientists have already decided with what object will be the next target of the mission. Previously it was assumed that the second destination will be one of the objects in the Kuiper belt.

It is an object having a sequence number 2014 MU69, its size is much smaller than Pluto. From 2014 Sun MU69 is still at 1, 6 billion kilometers farther away than Pluto. According to experts, who determined the new destination for New Horizons, 2014 MU69 - very convenient object, because the flight to it will need much less fuel than a flight to the other objects of the Kuiper Belt. 2014 MU69 has a diameter of about 45 km and an orbital period of 294 years. This object is drawn on the plane of the ecliptic close to the nearly circular orbit at a distance of about 44 a. e. from the sun.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/262064/