Post B1lGj4EWLd51cBmFdY by scienceandtechnology@www.minds.com
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(DIR) Post #B1lGj4EWLd51cBmFdY by scienceandtechnology@www.minds.com
2025-12-28T16:46:05+00:00
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It took 9 years and 3 billion miles to get this shot of Pluto’s icy Mountains.The math on this image is insane.New Horizons transmitted at 2,000 bits per second from 3 billion miles away. Slower than a 1990s dial-up modem. It took 16 months to download all the flyby data. The spacecraft had to hit a target box 100km wide, arriving within 150 seconds of schedule, after 9 years of flight. Miss it and the preloaded observation commands point at empty space.Ten days before arrival, the spacecraft crashed and went into safe mode. Engineers had 72 hours to restore everything. The probe is now 5 billion miles out, still whispering data back to Earth. We got 50 gigabits of Pluto photos using technology slower than your phone’s bluetooth. https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1852055184027934720