Can't wait for New Horizons to reach Pluto. It's a dream come true.

Knowing about the onboard computers is very interesting and rather marvelous that such a tiny processor is driving it. Amazing!

9 years... The moon is only a couple of days away and Mars is 6 months. This also shows that you don't need immense computing power for space travel, just the necessary. There are other pressing concerns so much more important. Electronics are far more sensible to radiation than humans.

I wonder if anyone playing with the Playstation 1 in 1994 did thought that a spacecraft using the same CPU would reach Pluto in 2015. 🤣 🤣 🤣

carlostex wrote:

9 years... The moon is only a couple of days away ...

New Horizons initial speed was 16.26 km/s (36,000 mph). It passed Earth's Moon orbit in just nine hours.

After the Jupiter gravity assist in 2007 its speed was 23 km/s (59,000 mph) relative to the Sun. At that speed a round the world trip would take less than half an hour.

But the distances involved are inmense, Pluto is now 4,800 million kilometers, or 32 AU, from Earth. Even at a brisk pace it takes its time to travel thus far.

Here's a nice accelerated simulation of the Pluto system flyby

Space stuff usually uses computer components that have long left the consumer market. I'm pretty sure NASA still has most of their vintage stuff from the 1970s and earlier in operation still. I think one of the mars rovers used what was essentially a PowerPC G3 (as in a 1990s iMac)

When it comes to this stuff it isn't about the latest and greatest it's more about tried and true hardware that can get the job done, and done right the first time in an environment where there are not second chances.

Heck, for a long while the Space Shuttle still used core memory since it's pretty much radiation-proof.

I would think they needed a low power CPU for this mission so a P4 3.6ghz was out. 😉

I wonder what temperature all that stuff is operating at (voltage unit makes heat to make electricity).

Just reading the New Horizons wiki page
"Initial, highly-compressed images will be transmitted within days. The science team will select the best images for public release. Uncompressed images will take about nine months[citation needed] to transmit, depending on Deep Space Network traffic."

TELVM wrote:

Solar panels can't cut it ~3.7 billion miles from the Sun http://sen.com/thumbs/1024x576/img/14262678572361426268213.jpg […]
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Solar panels can't cut it ~3.7 billion miles from the Sun

Thats what i thought too, the artist rendition are too optimistically 'bright'.

Well the Hubble space telescope is rocking a 486

Unknown_K wrote:

... for this mission ... a P4 3.6ghz ... 😉 ...

Very bad idea, the heat released by a Preshott during the flyby would thaw Pluto and its moons into oblivion. 🤣 🤣 🤣

Unknown_K wrote:

... I wonder what temperature all that stuff is operating at (voltage unit makes heat to make electricity).

"... The avionics are contained within the “thermos bottle” like core of the spacecraft. The average internal temperature varies from slightly under 50°C (during early operations with the lower deck facing the Sun at 1 AU) to sufficiently above 0°C to ensure that the hydrazine propellant does not freeze ..."

The New Horizons Spacecraft - Chapter 8. Thermal Management

Hydrazine freezes at about +2°C.

TeddyTheBear wrote:

... "Initial, highly-compressed images will be transmitted within days. The science team will select the best images for public release. Uncompressed images will take about nine months[citation needed] to transmit, depending on Deep Space Network traffic."

Don't worry, if all goes well NASA will begin releasing awesome enough images in about a month from now. 😉

zstandig wrote:

Space stuff usually uses computer components that have long left the consumer market. I'm pretty sure NASA still has most of their vintage stuff from the 1970s and earlier in operation still. I think one of the mars rovers used what was essentially a PowerPC G3 (as in a 1990s iMac)

When it comes to this stuff it isn't about the latest and greatest it's more about tried and true hardware that can get the job done, and done right the first time in an environment where there are not second chances.

well the other thing is it needs to be able to work without a heat spreader, since space is a vacume, there is no way to cool it.

candle_86 wrote:

zstandig wrote:

Space stuff usually uses computer components that have long left the consumer market. I'm pretty sure NASA still has most of their vintage stuff from the 1970s and earlier in operation still. I think one of the mars rovers used what was essentially a PowerPC G3 (as in a 1990s iMac)

When it comes to this stuff it isn't about the latest and greatest it's more about tried and true hardware that can get the job done, and done right the first time in an environment where there are not second chances.

well the other thing is it needs to be able to work without a heat spreader, since space is a vacume, there is no way to cool it.

But space is very cold so I don't think it would be an issue.

candle_86 wrote:

... since space is a vacume, there is no way to cool it.

In a vacuum there can be no convection and fans are useless, but fortunately excess heat can still be disposed off by means of thermal radiation.

Thermal radiation is what the IR cameras capture:

If we look at New Horizons' RTG, which is stuffed with hot plutonium pellets ...

· ·

... it has large fins to radiate excess heat away.

But as Smeezekitty points out, for a spacecraft like New Horizons operating in the frigid outer solar system cold is more a problem than heat for thermal management.

For probes operating much closer to the Sun, like the recently defunct MESSENGER, the opposite is true.