Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

I say we celebrate the arrival of New Horizons with something special on July 14th as mankind arrives at Pluto!
An amazing three billion mile journey!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJxwWpaGoJs

58 minutes long? If they can send a mission to Pluto can't they document it in five GIFs or less?

Arriving at Pluto and Bastille Day all at the same time. Requires a French wine to celebrate.

Oui!

Jim will be celebrating with Bordeaux Nouveau at the moment of arrival.

JCNorthway wrote:Arriving at Pluto and Bastille Day all at the same time. Requires a French wine to celebrate.

It's Pluto not Pluteaux.

Can you imagine, it went from Earth to Moon in like 8 hours.

'Merican discovered it and 'Mericans sent a thingy there. I will have a Ridge something or other. Just a shame they didn't think to launch it 10 days sooner.

I grew up fascinated with NASA and the space program. From a glimpse of the Sputnik in the night sky when just a little kid up to even now, really. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts were my heroes. I built model replicas of the Redstone, Titan, Saturn, rockets etc. and would launch them at the nearby school football/soccer fields. Manned or unmanned, space exploration stuff just draws me in. Thanks for the link, Jim. I'll spend an hour with it this weekend, along with something nice to drink.

Anyone see The Astronaut's Wives Club on TV last night? Looks kind of soap-opera-y but I couldn't resist the topic.

You and me both, DavidG, the space program was an incredible inspiration for me.
I heard them talking about that show on NPR, I meant to check it out.
Can't wait for the Pluto rendezvous!

Ditto. Many exciting memories of man in space. The fascination of the equipment required to keep someone alive in space and the effects of space on the body is amazing. The absence of gravity and seening how much muscle/bone mass these people lose in space. They can't even walk/stand when they first re-enter after a stint at the space station.

Never forget that first step on the moon sitting up early in the morning with Larry watching on our B & W television taking photos of the screen with our kodak instamatic! Yes David I too had models of spaceships,rockets planes landrovers etc through my bedroom as a kid. The wonderment of gazing up at the sky on a clear night miles away from the encroachment of city light is breathtaking on a clear night and to have a telescope to see the rings of Saturn,craters on the moon, the red planet Mars, the giant Jupiter with its purple eye and Sirius the brightest star in the sky are just a few of the interests readily found.

This really is exciting and July 14th should be a day of celebration if all goes well and this satellite cruising through space over 3 billion miles from home sends pictures back from a planet or not( not sure what Pluto's true status is today and why).

Thanks for sharing Commander Jim.

I was doing a little research on the who Pluto-is-not-a-planet controversy. There are like 3500 voting members of the International Astronomical Union and like only 350 voted at the end of the conference in Prague in 2006, it seemed like a totally rigged situation. They're saying they may revisit the issue after this rendezvous. The arguments in favor of planet designation seem stronger: An orbit, albeit irregular, around the sun; an atmosphere; moons. A lot of it has to do with Pluto's ability to "gravitationally clear its orbit," which some argue is arbitrary. Other planets, like Mars, would lose their designations as planets but for the fortuity of the location of their orbit in the solar system. Pluto does an interesting dance with its large moon Charon, the center of gravity is between the two, closer to Pluto. So it is like they are orbiting each other while the whole system is orbiting the sun. New Horizons is going to whiz by the planet at an incredible rate of speed. It is going to capture only one hemisphere in detail and then after it flies past they are going to try to capture the back side, which will be very low resolution, as they will be relying on the very faint moonshine from Charon for the very minimal light available. The sun will be more than 3 billion miles away, as opposed to the 93 million miles that separates us from it here on Earth.

For space fans Kennedy Space Center is a must do experience.

They're trying to give us a heart attack.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spea ... uto-flyby/

It wouldn't be exciting without a glitch...

...so that's our excitement for this mission, right?

Glad it's back up and running. Losing the bugger after all these years would be a serious bummer.

hmm...maybe a good site for a BWE convention

As Francois Audouze used to say when a wine really moved him: "Such an emotion, from another planet!"

9:02 p.m. eastern US time on the 14th is when they expect to start getting the first data from the flyby, which will have occurred earlier that day.

A good summary of some important facts about Pluto and the New Horizons mission:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolog ... ar-AAcSPWB

The craft just went incommunicado a couple minutes ago, it will now be silent until 9:07pm tomorrow night as its computers focus on data gathering.

From 470,000 miles away...
No longer a speck in the sky!

About 40 minutes before requisition of signal. Very tense moments!

A fun article:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/anxiety-re ... luto-dark/

Listening to Erik Satie, Gymnopedie No 1, sipping on a much better, much more serene 2002 Branaire.
Mankind in a few minutes about to learn whether its little bug of a contraption, which has threaded a needle some 3,000,000,000 miles away, ten years after launch (they didn't have iPhones when it started), traveling 31,000 mph, has survived the Pluto-Charon "system."
Life continues to amaze, every single moment of every single day!

Live coverage on nasa.gov.

SUCCESS!!!!!

All systems "nominal", New Horizons has survived!

I'm so loving seeing all the females on the team, back in the 60s it was 100% testosterone filled men with thick black glasses.
What an epic night!
Can't wait to see the pictures tomorrow!

and on it goes into deep space!

11,000 foot high ice mountains.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newh ... index.html

Impressive navigation to say the least. Well done NASA.

Jim,

This has been amazing stuff. We've been following the NASA chanel for several days and the pride/accomplishments of the team has been amazing. 9 1/2 yrs in space,hurtling past countless potential disasters to wake up and function without any accidents or malfunctions is truly an amazing feat of science. Thanks for the heads up and the latest link that you sent FYI doesn't work for us.

Danny

It really has turned out to be a fascinating visit Danny. I was expecting just a boring, frozen terrain but it has been anything but. The differences in surface compositions between Pluto and Charon is very interesting. The link I posted is just the homepage of nasa.gov. I think they are planning on posting substantially more pictures in the next two days.