Pluto has EVENLY spaced huge dark spots!

a reply to: Ross 54

Oh my.....

I certainly hope this is something to fix quickly. I could have taken the probe blowing up on the launch pad, or even failing halfway there, but with only 10 days left???

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGG!!!!.

There. I feel better. Well....not really.....

If someone says "psych! nothing was really wrong." I'm gonna punch them in the nose!

a reply to: Ross 54

What a huge kick in the butt. This Pluto flyby has attracted so much attention that it will be a really embarrassing failure for NASA if it's something other than a minor glitch. May be a little dramatic, but folks are excited to see Pluto..

Let's keep our fingers crossed for a quick resolution.

VB

a reply to: abeverage

That looks very like consecutive meteor impacts...remember Jupiter and the Shoemaker Levy comet? I remember the comet broke apart into a drawn out stream of missiles shooting off towards the planet..which was revolving.

Hence, the long line of evenly spaced dark spots...impacts, which would have been one hell of an impact zone, if the planet wasn't rotating and equally spacing the impacts.

For this to work as a solution in this case though, we'd have to have a 'given'...that the meteors were more or less evenly spaced apart on their vector to the planet, or else they wouldn't be equally spaced on Pluto.

a reply to: voyagerboy

I just read that it was a primary computer problem...comp reported an anomaly on board, and went into shut down mode, nasa then switched to the backup computer and are getting telemetry on the problems...but there's a 9 hour signal delay to the probe...not sure whether or not it will affect the planned close approach on the 14th or not yet though.

There are 2 redundant main processors on board. Hopefully, the problem is isolated in one of them, but if it turns out that the glitch is external, in the interface logic, they may have a problem. Fingers crossed for sure.

Mongoose V processor (source: NASA/John Hopkins)

The command and data handling system – a radiation-hardened 12 megahertz Mongoose V processor guided by intricate flight software – is the spacecraft’s “brain.” The processor distributes operating commands to each subsystem, collects and processes instrument data, and sequences information sent back to Earth. It also runs the advanced “autonomy” algorithms that allow the spacecraft to check the status of each system and, if necessary, correct any problems, switch to backup systems or contact operators on Earth for help.

Although being environmentally hardened, and using the highest quality electronic components, they are not unlike Process Control systems used every day in industry. Redundancy is critical to systems that cannot be allowed to fail, but there are single sources of failure that can have unpredictable effects on the rest of the system. There are certainly a bunch of engineers that are not getting any sleep presently and I hope they can pull this recovery off before the system hits CPA.



Added:
Safe mode, in which the system is presently in, is booting the system into a state where all non-critical interrupts, drivers and API's are disconnected from the processor. Basically it leaves the main control program and communications, which, since it did reboot, (from the other processor) and communicated back, are probably ok. This is wonderful news but they are not out of the woods yet.

It is a clear sign of civilization in my opinion.

a reply to: abeverage

Impact craters...

An asteroid or comet breaks up and hit the planet in timed intervals..

Not much else it can be, unless you dress in a tinfoil suit. lol

One can imagine a broken up stream of comet hitting tail first. First the largest, then tapering down to individuals and then small debris. Wonder if it could be true.

Original from Sky & Telescope but I scaled it with gifedit.

originally posted by: wildespace

originally posted by: Ross 54
The New Horizons space probe approaching Pluto suffered a technical fault on Saturday. It is currently able to communicate with Earth, but is in safe mode, which means that it is unable to do any new photography, or other scientific work for the moment.
The mission team will analyze diagnostic data from the probe, to try to learn the nature of the problem. They hope to put New Horizons back into normal operations within a day or two, ahead of the Jul. 14th flyby of Pluto. Link to news article on this matter:
www.nbcnews.com...

Can't resist to play the devil's advocate here... NASA spotted something they don't want us to see, and invented this supposed "malfunction" as an excuse for not giving us those new images. Either that, or the aliens disabled the spacecraft to prevent us from discovering what we shouldn't know.

Oh my god, you just KNOW that there will threads to that respect here on ATS very soon.

As far as the glitch goes, it may be standard thing to happen, but that doesnt stop me wanting to cry and cross every digit

a reply to: DAVID64

What was the name of the book? Sounds like something I would like to read.

originally posted by: charlyv

One can imagine a broken up stream of comet hitting tail first. First the largest, then tapering down to individuals and then small debris. Wonder if it could be true.

Original from Sky & Telescope but I scaled it with gifedit.

I resized all pictures and add a green circle.
The biggest dark area it's clearly the result of an impact, with a HUGE loss of material. When this area is at the edge in pictures, planet's circle form change. It's like a bitten apple

a reply to: yomitu



Still hard to tell if that is the case (loss of material or an impacts). But it is so totally cool that Pluto is going to be very VERY interesting to say the least!

a reply to: charlyv

Just read an article that said everything should be OK for next week's flyby. Whew.

www.space.com...

VB

originally posted by: voyagerboy
a reply to: charlyv

Just read an article that said everything should be OK for next week's flyby. Whew.

www.space.com...

VB

Those engineers are amazing, to say the least. Talk about pressure.

a reply to: yomitu

Nice job resizing to keep the same relative distance, as in the original, Pluto gets quite larger as the spacecraft approaches.
I like the fact that you can see the deformation. This is really cool.

A series of images in this article suggests to me that the dark spots are an extention of the large long dark area to the right of the spots: www.nasa.gov...
They might have formed under gravitational interaction with Charon, just like the Moon has dark maria on the side facing the Earth.

The "spots" are hundreds of miles in size each, I doubt they are the result of impacts.

As I already mentioned, making any definite judgements right now is too early due to the very low resolution and the need to enhance the images so radically. This reminds me of the martian "canals" which were of course proven to be false with better observations. Pluto's drak spots may indeed be there, but not as dark and well-defined as they appear in the processed images.

I simply cannot wait for this flyby. We so very rarely get to see something that has truly never been seen by human eye previously. SCIENCE!!!

Hi we talked about this thread on the last ATS radio show with Dr Stu our resident Astrophysicist working with NH.

If you want to hear his thoughts on Pluto feel free to listen to the podcast www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: zazzafrazz

cool.

Thanks Ms. Z.

Don't know how I missed this.

NASA have produced a map projection of the surface.

www.nasa.gov...

As it is centred on the bit the probe will see as it passes it doesn't show the markings as we've seen in the photos, so here's a quick rejig of it: