Pluto in a Minute: How Long Will We Be Able to Talk to New Horizons? скачать в хорошем качестве

Pluto in a Minute: How Long Will We Be Able to Talk to New Horizons?

New Horizons may be far from the Earth and all on its own, but we can still talk to it! This is Pluto in a Minute. So the real question is just how long will New Horizons have power to send back a signal for us to listen to. The answer is quite a while. The spacecraft has a battery on board with enough power for at least twenty years! In that time New Horizons will of course get further from the Earth but that doesn't mean we won't be able to talk to it. It just means it'll get a little bit more difficult. It's actually the light time delay that's going to become the most problematic for talking to the spacecraft. At the moment of closest approach, the one way light time delay between the Earth and New Horizons was about four and a half hours. Not only will that light time delay get longer as the spacecraft moves further from the Earth on the order of about one light hour per year, as the Earth orbits around the Sun the light time changes as well. For half a year the Earth is getting a little bit closer to New Horizons and the light time delay gets a little bit shorter. But the other half of the year the Earth is going away from New Horizons so the light time delay gets a little bit longer. Something could go wrong and it could cease communication long before its battery dies and it would stop transmitting. So really, as long as New Horizons is healthy, it'll keep calling home. For more on Pluto check out the New Horizons websites, join the conversation online with the hashtag #PlutoFlyby and keep coming back here for more Pluto in a Minute. http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons http://pluto.jhuapl.edu