If you attempt to Navigate a Space Vehicle like this one to fly at precise speeds and VERY precise trajectories to use the associated G forces provided by Jupiter and THEN to actually rendezvous with Pluto so precisely is a "Math Problem" that no one man could possibly do. It must have taken a Team of PhD's with Mathematics and Physics' Degrees just to do the Navigation alone. I honestly think that the Navigation was harder than designing and building the actual Craft. Mankind is truly amazing! 99.99% of Men and Women couldn't even comprehend the Mathematics of such a precise Navigational Problem. Imagine if YOUR Math Professor assigned you a weekend homework problem to send a craft to one of the Moons of Saturn! Incredible Mathematics and mind numbing to the average Human...
29:45 Ann Harch said that no spacecraft in our lifetime will go back to Pluto. What!? Really!?? Then let this be a reminder that we need to explore in Space as much as possible! Science is awesome!
This is one of the most advanced technological devices we have created. It also only runs on about a 60 watt lightbulb when working in tandem with all other instruments?! Amazing!
This is humanity at its best. It is said that civilization truly exists when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit under. To spend ones life and career endeavoring to answer questions they know may not be answered their lifetimes is a noble act, and one worthy of undertaking. Not only because of the benefit to those yet unborn, but because of all the answers found along the way. Often answers to questions we had not yet thought to ask.
Michael Powers That's why I try to remember those who came before like Leonardo Da Vinci and Galelei Galileo; who could in their mind's eye grasp the wonder of the heavens but could only be content in carefully laying the paving stones that have allowed us to in 2015 to explore a comet; rove on mars; study both sides of our sun; explore ceres and reveal the tapestry of Pluto; a world 9 light-hours distant.
+Michael Powers no this is us at our stupidest...all that time & cash and not ONE instrument sent to a surface to transmit data home...not even a monitor for NEO approaches...we could get blindsided while these imbeciles are acting like tourists at a new beach
This is the rub of humanity: to understand the limits of your mortality and still generate light in the darkness; building knowledge and honing instruments so that one day our descendants can not just perfect science and technology; but provide the means to explore beyond the horizons of today. Still...this is obvious; what is harder as Michael Powers implies is to start building the future and protect humanity by gathering data.
Michael Southcott Thank you for being the voice of reason, and stating so eloquently what I lacked the patience to. It's just that I wonder what perverse part of human nature compels some to see a noble act, then desperately try to find fault with it. Even if the mission had been a complete failure, it still would have been worth the attempt.
Being an American "child of the 50's" I think I was born at the perfect time! Sputnik went up the month before I was born and I followed the Astronauts and their Missions throughout Childhood, culminating with the Moon Landings when I was 12. Now I've worked for an Aerospace plant for 35+ years and our Company has had parts on ALL space missions from Mercury Program through every Shuttle Mission. As for Space Exploration I may have been born at the best times we may ever see, even if we go "Inter-Stellar" after I'm gone. I hope to live long enough for us to fully explore the Oort Cloud which will be terrific compared to Pluto "being the edge of the Solar System" when I was born. Thanks to NASA and ALL Nations with Space Programs!!
I remember I was GOING THROUGH PUBERTY when they first launched this mission! I LITERALLY made myself FORGET so I didn't have to excitedly wait so long, AND IT WORKED! A decade later, I was reminded and we're now witnessing the *MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF THE DECADE!!!*
Hats off to all the researchers and the whole team! Found this on Twitter: "For perspective, New Horizons cost as much as 2 F-35 fighter jets, or about 5 hours of Social Security." Just if humans are wise enough to invest money in space exploration rather than the military. Just my 2 cents.
Amazing! Such a huge accomplishment😃 This was an extremely informative program, NASA. Honestly, it wasn't long enough. We, collectively, have so many questions and are eagerly awaiting the outcome.
I saw about the picture of pluto and I think it's really awesome like everything about this planet. Considering this planet was the farthest planet we know so far (I know there are/could be another planets). I feel I'm happy enough I'm alive and able to see a picture of pluto. It's a bless.
From what I can tell, this cost the same as the Hobbit movies. I know which one is of greater worth to humanity. Why on earth aren't there more projects like this in the pipeline? Thank you NASA for increasing my wonder at our universe.
I'm sorry, but if I were working at NASA right now I'd be peeing my pants with excitement that Pluto is now just 1 MONTH AWAY!!! Good luck to all working on the project- I'm following this with great excitement!
I'm an unashamed Mike Brown fangirl, I blame him for inspiring me to go to the UK Centre for Planetary Science this year! 2015 has been a year in space like no other in my lifetime
NASA again presents the wonderful works that they strive to educate us with. Keep up the great work. I hope we can see more of our youth involved with these future plans (for them). I cant wait for next month! I for see RU-vid posting NASA's next video REALLY SOON with close up pictures of Pluto!!!
tears in my eyes... it feels for a moment we were eternal. i got it get out of this human madness and become a replicant, and then travel out there in space for ever, and ever. people should look at these things
Its been a long time since I've had 'the 'good' exitement shivers. This event makes up for the waiting. Another six days, can't wait. Good luck to everyone and everything involved in this mission.
It's July the 5th and we only have 11 more days until New Horizons passes Pluto and we see it for the first time!! How exciting is that!! The only thing I am sad about is that there is no way we can land on it and collect information. But, I still can't wait!!
Videos like this is why I still love youtube. So amazing to be lost in wonder about what we will find there. Its amazing to think of it as ''our achievement''... as humanity's achievement... Science, bitch!
Soooo excited I can't even explain I think Pluto is my favourite planet because I feel like it so lonely and it has not got enough attention like the other planets.
My great Grand sons also growing up in Kansas will now grow up in a world where this knowledge wil be commonly available hopefully for them to study and perhaps build on.
Dear NASA, I have a spacecraft idea we'll I think you can build a spacecraft that takes in the gas in space and uses it as gas and then it lets the spacecraft travel fast also it will reduce the price
DragonBorn Hello, perhaps if you have any ideas regarding future ideas, you should write directly to NASA themselves. Of course, a little knowledge, experience, degrees & other "bling" would help.
This constant "epic" music is so tiring... :/ Give the viewer some rest - it's like watching the intro, or a teaser throughout the whole movie. You can't focus on dialogues because of that.
Hi, ALL, You are doing a great job and service to the humanity, . I feel a little bit proud for myself just to follow some of your success, CONGRATULATIONS for all that SUCCESSES , RESULTS and Human Benefits.
I really do hope all goes well. Assuming it does, it'll be very interesting to see if there are any congratulatory messages from the Churches, i.e. from Rome, Canterbury, York et al. So far (Philae, LHC opening and LHC discovery of the Higgs particle) these pulpits have been conspicuous by their silence in the face of these triumphs of observational science.
Copied and quoted from another website by another commenter: "The probe will be traveling so fast that it travels over a million kilometers per day. By the time we receive telemetry from the probe indicating that it is 100,000 km away from Pluto (nearly 10x the minimum flyby distance) the probe will have already completed its flyby and be 100,000 km on the other side of Pluto. So the vast majority of the most valuable scientific observations will be entirely pre-programmed and we won't see the data until many hours or days later." It's sort of sad that we can't yet drop a probe into orbit around the Pluto system. Too many unknowns as of yet to be able to do so, I suppose.
***** There IS life out there, it's statistically GUARANTEED. *It's simply our limited technology preventing us from seeing them.* (If religious fanatics hadn't been burning scientists alive for practicing "voodoo", who knows, we may have seen life already :D. )
cybertree P.S. I'm still waiting for the paranoid simpleton in his basement to slam his forehead on the keyboard and say, *"_AMERICA FAKED THE MOON LANDING, IT WUZ DONE IN A HOLLYWOOD CUNSPEERASY!!1!_"* ~Yeah, and Hitler is still alive in space, because him and the illuminati made a moon-base in the face of mars!
did you hear that part at the end, bankers? 2 and a half million work hours. That's what teamwork is. Did you hear that bankers? I think bankers should be jailed. I know that's beside the point of this video. But 2 and a half million work hours. That is what inspiration is. That is what should be rewarded.
Why no stars, they would be on any raw image that had the very dim Pluto illuminated enough to see detail, even if they were blurred or streaky, or incoherent parts of a composite photo, or they distracted from the view of Pluto- they would be on the raw images and they would be of interest to the public, if NASA had them surely they would show them.
Hurrah for good old USA tech know-how and ingenuity. The fact that we can do this, and similar missions like the Curiosity Mars rover, brings me great pride. I'll get flamed for this, but compare this mission with that of most other countries. whose primary "mission" is to build crude atomic weapons or subjugate their neighbors with machine guns mounted on Toyota trucks; there is no comparison. We (the USA) have freely shared data from deep space probes, Hubble, and many others, for the advancement of science and mankind.
neXib I don't disagree. The budget cuts for NASA and other benevolent scientific missions sickens me. I cannot believe we no longer have a launch vehicle capable of taking people to the moon or beyond, let alone into a normal Earth orbit. But it's not defense spending, which is only 12% to 15% of the budget, it's social handouts and the like.
KurtB "Social handouts"? Perhaps if you consider Medicare and Social Security (the latter of which has always paid for itself, and for now is still sitting on a large surplus) "social handouts". When it comes to discretionary spending, defense spending makes up half of the budget, and much of the rest of the discretionary budget includes things like spending on infrastructure (woefully underfunded), the NIH (also woefully underfunded), and so forth. The Pentagon's budget for a single year is as big as all of NASA's budgets for the last three or four decades. And that budget excludes "extras" like spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the fact that Pentagon spending never gets properly audited, and so is riddled with waste. For that matter, simply ending tax breaks for the oil companies or a reasonable increase in the capital gains tax could easily fund a large increase in NASA's budget. "Social handouts" are not the problem.
FYI, comparisons: Total US military budget for 2015 = $756.4 billion (1 year) (According to useconomy.about.com ) Total US taxpayer subsidies going to banks = $83 billion (per year) (According to bloombergview.com ) NASA budget request for 2015 = $17.5 billion (According to space.com ) More on NASA budget:www.wikiwand.com/en/Budget_of_NASA (References at bottom of page as usual)
Total Social Security, Medicare and Means Tested Welfare in the USA: at least $2.3 trillion (in 2011) (According to www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_programs_in_the_United_States - References at bottom of page)
What's the name of the song. Or soundtrack. Whatever. That starts around 1:33? I've heard it on 2 videos: This and the Twisted Colossus announcement trailer.
Great program. One little criticism about the video is the annoying background music play throughout the entire program. Can't wait for 071415 for another acheivement of mankind.
I like how at 23:20 dude can't calculate how old he'll be from then 2004, at 2015. I'm a mechanical engineer and more often than not, I can't do simple arithmetic on the spot as well :(
