NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Begins Intensive Data Downlink Phase.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-begins-intensive-data-downlink-phase
If you liked the first historic images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, you’ll love what’s to come.
Seven weeks after New Horizons sped past the Pluto system to study Pluto and its moons – previously unexplored worlds – the mission team will begin intensive downlinking of the tens of gigabits of data the spacecraft collected and stored on its digital recorders. The process moves into high gear on Saturday, Sept. 5, with the entire downlink taking about one year to complete.
“This is what we came for—these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” the typical downlink rate is approximately 1-4 kilobits per second.
The team also plans to continue posting new, unprocessed pictures from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons project website each Friday. The images will be available at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php; the next LORRI set is scheduled for posting on Sept. 11.
PS. I love the following image. Can you guess what it is? It’s the Occultation of the Sun by Charon. This proves that Charon has no atmosphere. If you download and increase brightness you can see the ghostly outline of Charon as seen by reflected light from Pluto.
