New Horizons heads for flyby of space rock 4bn miles from Earth

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/31/new-horizons-heads-for-flyby-of-space-rock-ultima-thule

New Horizons heads for flyby of space rock 4bn miles from Earth

Ian Sample Science editor

Mon 31 Dec 2018 08.00 GMT

A Nasa probe will perform the most distant flyby in history in the early hours of New Year’s Day when it barrels past a space rock called Ultima Thule on the outer edge of the solar system. Unless gremlins intervene, the New Horizons spacecraft will zoom by the cosmic body at 5.33am GMT and snap thousands of photographs of the dark, icy body as it speeds on into the void.

Ultima Thule lies 4bn miles from Earth in the Kuiper belt, a band of dwarf planets, space rocks and icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6bn years ago. New Horizons is so distant that mission scientists have no way of helping out if any last-minute glitches arise. Instead, any final troubleshooting must be handled by the probe’s onboard software.
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In recent weeks, scientists on the New Horizons team have scoured pictures from the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (Lorri) for signs of trouble ahead. At such speed, a particle the size of a grain of rice could knock out the spacecraft.
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Mission controllers will not know if the flyby has gone well until engineering data from the probe is beamed back after it has passed Ultima Thule. The probe’s software should respond to most glitches, such as an instrument suddenly drawing too much current or an incoming cosmic ray upsetting the computer.
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[lastlib]

1. Very Exciting!

Looking forward to see how it comes out!

How can we send a robot spacecraft smaller than an automobile four BILLION miles to fly in close proximity to a rock no bigger than a small town, and have it fly by at high speed and take pictures/other measurements, then send that info BACK another four billion miles? It is simply mind-boggling what our science can do!

-- -- to the folks at NASA!

[Wounded Bear]

2. Good stuff!

Thanks for the link.