Ray McCarthy
Sentient Marmite: The Truth may make you fret.
1985.Don't forget the Pluto has just passed its closest approach to the Sun.
The "Rockies" sized mountains are likely water ice. That will not have melted.
1985.Don't forget the Pluto has just passed its closest approach to the Sun.
Yes, highly eccentric orbit but it's closest point to the Sun is only just inside the orbit of Neptune, I wouldn't have thought that was close enough for significant sublimation, but I may be wrong. And it's thought that it wasn't formed nearly as far out as it is now (see my #56 above)
I'm far from convinced that that the scientists know all the formation mechanisms in this colder, darker and less gravity regime.
1985.
The "Rockies" sized mountains are likely water ice. That will not have melted.
Just as well I'm not programming New Horizons. I was 1.61% out!Pluto has a 248 year orbit and hence passing closest to the Sun in 1989 (the correct date)
Tricky considering they couldn't even OrbitIt's too bad they couldn't have landed mobile explorer
Just as well I'm not programming New Horizons. I was 1.61% out!
So a 21 year old Plutonian would be over 5200 Earth years old
Tricky considering they couldn't even Orbit
We could probably do it now. But horribly expensive.
Perhaps. But likely the USA government prefers spending on other things. New Horizons was cost of about 3 fighter jets. What you'd like might be 100x more at a very rough guess.
Now if the photos show an alien artefact I'd imagine the budget would be found.
I6 to 18 months is what I've been reading; I think all the images we've been getting so far have been transmitted compressed, New Horizon still has all the raw images in its memory. And yes I'm looking forward to the sky at Night special.Tonight on BBC R4 they were saying OVER A YEAR to get back all the data. There is a Sky at Night Special on BBC mon 20th July 2015 I think.
The problem here is that it has to be travelling incredibly fast to get there in a reasonable time and this is way too fast to be captured into orbit around such a small body. So they'd have to carry a lot of fuel to decelerate and that makes it harder to get it up to those speeds in the first place and so on. It would be massively expensive.I think in this case , It might worth the expense. It looks quite different from both the Moon and Mars and other bodied in the system.
Yes. Absolutely. But certainly possible.It would be massively expensive.