Ultima Thule is a Snowman

It's been described as a potato or a peanut but now the latest image of the distant space rock reveals Ultima Thule is actually a big snowman ... or a duck.

A new picture returned from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft shows the little world to be two objects joined together - to give a look like a "snowman". The US probe's images acquired as it approached Ultima hinted at the possibility of a double body, but the first detailed picture from Tuesday's close flyby confirms it.
www.bbc.co.uk...

a reply to: gortex

Proof that Santa is an alien.

Maybe, this is how mommy and daddy asteroids make baby asteroids...

Dont you mean Gender neutral snow thing?

Credit: NASA via AP
Source: phys.org, "NASA: Icy object past Pluto looks like reddish snowman"

Two images, the third being a color composite. Or you can see 3 snow "people" running from a huge Pac-man!!

The real data is still down-linking and we will not "see" detail until some time in February!

Looks very much like 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

I wonder if this a natural default of certain small bodies or if Thule is a comet, or is this artificially constructed from an existing object (as I suspect 67P is) or was it possibly mined this way?

Fascinating

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Or you can see 3 snow "people" running from a huge Pac-man!!

Pac-person.

a reply to: notsure1


Zoinks!

That would, like, make them... ga- ga- ga- ga-... GHOSTS!!!

originally posted by: abeverage
Looks very much like 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

I wonder if this a natural default of certain small bodies or if Thule is a comet, or is this artificially constructed from an existing object (as I suspect 67P is) or was it possibly mined this way?

Fascinating

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko sure looks like something has been chewing at it. It really does not seem like it could form like that. I guess being a comet could give it that look.

Ultima just looks like two space bodies that came together.

Oh my money, BB-8 is real. This changes everything.

a reply to: gortex

Fascinating, look's like a soft collision between two body's, slow enough for them to merge without shattering, perhaps even the result of an earlier collision and two smaller part's re-merging under there own mutual attraction.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

What is the reason it takes a month+ for the complete transmission?

a reply to: Mach2

15 Watt transmitter on board New Horizons.

originally posted by: Mach2
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

What is the reason it takes a month+ for the complete transmission?

Large amounts of data, not much bandwidth, and enormous distances.

Looks like this chap, to me:

a reply to: gortex

to give a look like a "snowman"

That's a euphemism...for 'turd'

originally posted by: Mach2
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

What is the reason it takes a month+ for the complete transmission?

The data transfer rate is 10 to 20 times SLOWER than an old dial-up modem.

This is due to the vast distance and the available power on the craft. By the time the signal from New Horizons reaches Earth, that signal received is one millionth of a billionth of a watt.

originally posted by: Box of Rain

originally posted by: Mach2
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

What is the reason it takes a month+ for the complete transmission?

The data transfer rate is 10 to 20 times SLOWER than an old dial-up modem.

This is due to the vast distance and the available power on the craft. By the time the signal from New Horizons reaches Earth, that signal received is one millionth of a billionth of a watt.

That, and a bunch of other technical nuanses.

Alan Stern says " In order to get that, we're going to have to analyze the images that we have in a little bit more detail. But more importantly, we have to get down some engineering data that tells us about the pointing, and we have to get our next trajectory reconstruction of the first post-flyby, and to get all of those steps is going to require a couple of weeks of work after we get out of the solar conjunction that I was talking about, and at that point we will be able to calculate where in that long train of hundreds of images we will find Ultima, and then place commands in a command load for February to download only those that contain the targets."

Another mission member says:
- One additional big reason why we can't get down the highest-resolution images earlier, is that they are stored on the second solid-state data recorder (SSR2), which we can only access when we power up the backup computer. Given our tight power budget and other complexities (e.g. additional housekeeping data are generated and need to be downlinked when the backup computer is powered up), we have to wait a while to power up that computer again to get at the SSR2 data.

- The command loads, which each cover 2-3 weeks of spacecraft activities, are developed over a cycle that starts well over a month before execution. So to downlink jailbars and use them to determine which images to send down wouldn't be any faster than what we're currently planning.

- Yes, we get down histograms for each LORRI image, but they are quantized in a way that means that a faint target like Ultima doesn't show up in the them, in the short exposures needed for our highest resolution images. So histograms don't tell us which images contain the target.

- Adding the capability to generate and downlink thumbnails, like any flight software change, would take months to develop and test to ensure it was bulletproof. Given our small team, it wouldn't be a good use of resources.

- Like Alan said, New Horizons is a mission of delayed gratification. Patience is a key requirement.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Wait until we see some actual detail right now we still have a fuzzy outline of what Thule looks like...

a reply to: abeverage

Can't wait to see them. Should be about a month if we are lucky. Here's some images that let you see the surface features of Ultima a little better.