add .. Wheniwasyounger we didn't think much about a robotic participation in our extinction ..
CROWDED HOUSE LYRICS Play Music "Don't Dream It's Over"
There is freedom within there is freedom without Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup There's a battle ahead many battles are lost But you'll never see the end of the road While you're traveling with me
[CHORUS] Hey now, hey now Don't dream it's over Hey now, hey now When the world comes in They come, they come To build a wall between us We know they won't win
Now I'm towing my car there's a hole in the roof my possessions are causing me suspicion but there's no proof in the paper today tales of war and of waste but you turn right over to the T.V. page
[CHORUS] Hey now, hey now Don't dream it's over Hey now, hey now When the world comes in They come, they come To build a wall between us We know they won't win
Now I'm walking again to the beat of a drum And I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart Only shadows ahead barely clearing the roof Get to know the feeling of liberation and relief
Hey now, Hey now Don't dream it's over Hey now, Hey now When the world comes in They come, they come To build a wall between us You know they won't win
Nasa's New Horizons probe shows Pluto bigger than expected
New Horizon measurements reveal Pluto is roughly two-thirds the size of the moon, and probably holds more ice beneath its surface than previously thought
New Horizons spacecraft Undated handout artist’s impression. Photograph: Johns Hopkins University Applied/PA
Ian Sample Science editor @iansample
Tuesday 14 July 2015 12.58 EDT
Comments 708
A Nasa spacecraft .. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/ .. that will hurtle past Pluto on Tuesday at more than 45,000 kilometres per hour has revealed the dwarf planet to be larger than scientists thought.
Alan Stern .. http://www.swri.org/iProfiles/ViewiProfile.asp?k=s81y802jwy4371v , the lead scientist on the $700m (£450m) mission, said the increased dimensions meant Pluto must hold more ice and less rock beneath its surface than researchers had expected. Pluto has been hard to measure with any accuracy from Earth because it is so far away, and its atmosphere creates mirages that can fool ground-based telescopes.
Other instruments onboard New Horizons confirmed that Pluto’s north pole bears an icy cap. The latest measurements beamed to Earth from the probe picked up chemical signatures of methane and nitrogen ice in the polar cap.
One early image received from New Horizons last week showed Pluto as an orangey globe bearing a large bright spot shaped like a heart. More recent images have revealed cliffs, craters and chasms larger than the Grand Canyon.
[ SHOOKS, IMAGE, cannot reproduce ] “The science we’ve already made is mouth-watering,” said Stern. “The Pluto system is enchanting in its strangeness and its alien beauty.”
The most dangerous hazards for New Horizons are dust particles trapped in orbit around Pluto after being dislodged from its moons by meteorite impacts. A strike from a dust particle the size of a grain of rice could destroy the spacecraft, but the risk of such a disaster is low, at around one in 10,000.
The New Horizons spacecraft has spent more than nine years on its 4.8bn kilometre journey to Pluto, the last world in the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft. On board are seven sophisticated instruments and the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.
When the probe blasted off in January 2006, Pluto was the ninth planet in the solar system. Seven months later, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union voted to downgrade the icy body to a dwarf planet, because it does not dominate its region of space in the way the other major planets do.
The spacecraft will take scores of photographs as it speeds past Pluto and its five known moons, Charon, Hydra, Nix, STyx and Kerberos. The images will give the first close-up view of the mountains and valleys of the unknown world, and its tenuous atmosphere seen as the sun rises and sets behind it. Instruments on New Horizons might even find evidence that it snows on the tiny world.
Nasa .. http://www.theguardian.com/science/nasa .. officials expect the first images from the flyby to be released on Wednesday night. The snapshots from onboard cameras will capture details up to 100 metres across, a vast improvement on those taken on approach, which pick out features about 15 kilometres across.
But scientists are in for a long wait to learn everything New Horizons sees. The probe will collect so much information as it passes Pluto that it will take 16 months to send it all back to Earth.
The mission marks the end of the US space agency’s bid to explore every planet in the solar system, starting with Venus in 1962. Tuesday’s flyby coincides with the 50th anniversary of the first ever fly-by of Mars by the Mariner 4 probe.