There are 'theoretically' enough objects beyond Pluto that with the maneuvering capability NH has remaining (up to around 1 degree of deflection up, down, left, right and anything in between) there might have been 2 reachable, sequentially.
As we found out on the Ice Hunters project, those objects might be there, but if we can't see them from here, it isn't possible to direct New Horizons to one or two of them though.
Hubble sure made it look easy, I can assure you, ground based imaging for this task is really difficult.
So it isn't a 'chance' alignment, the chance is there are many objects out there, but seeing them in time to steer towards one is the trick. New Horizons has a good camera, but even as close as it is, Hubble is way better at finding them.
And even with a better camera on New Horizons, the data rate back to earth isn't high enough to send back scads of pictures with possible rocks and/or ice balls in them for us to search either. New Horizons was very carefully designed; it can hold enough data from a useful Pluto flyby, it can gather that same amount of data in the time available during the Pluto encounter, and the radio is just powerful enough to send all the data back in around a year. If you beef up one capability, it doesn't help unless you beef up all of them, and then the craft is too heavy to get to Pluto. It really was carefully optimized.
It's kind of overkill for the upcoming flyby, but it's there, and all we had to do was look to find something else to look over.
I was hoping for 2 or even 3 objects, if all 3 were wildly different or terribly similar, you really learn something about all the stuff out there. If you only look at one, then if it is super bland, or super weird, you don't really know too much about the others.
And they are taking distant looks at some of the others (Idunno about mine, btw) when they are bright/close enough to study as NH moves further and further out.
As we found out on the Ice Hunters project, those objects might be there, but if we can't see them from here, it isn't possible to direct New Horizons to one or two of them though.
Hubble sure made it look easy, I can assure you, ground based imaging for this task is really difficult.
So it isn't a 'chance' alignment, the chance is there are many objects out there, but seeing them in time to steer towards one is the trick. New Horizons has a good camera, but even as close as it is, Hubble is way better at finding them.
And even with a better camera on New Horizons, the data rate back to earth isn't high enough to send back scads of pictures with possible rocks and/or ice balls in them for us to search either. New Horizons was very carefully designed; it can hold enough data from a useful Pluto flyby, it can gather that same amount of data in the time available during the Pluto encounter, and the radio is just powerful enough to send all the data back in around a year. If you beef up one capability, it doesn't help unless you beef up all of them, and then the craft is too heavy to get to Pluto. It really was carefully optimized.
It's kind of overkill for the upcoming flyby, but it's there, and all we had to do was look to find something else to look over.
I was hoping for 2 or even 3 objects, if all 3 were wildly different or terribly similar, you really learn something about all the stuff out there. If you only look at one, then if it is super bland, or super weird, you don't really know too much about the others.
And they are taking distant looks at some of the others (Idunno about mine, btw) when they are bright/close enough to study as NH moves further and further out.
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