New Horizons Ultima Thule Flyby

[popeyespappy]

I believe that is what they were hoping for when they chose Ultima Thule for a flyby.

If we put the technical difficulties of finding and the sending New Horizon to image this object from earth into perspective,  we can liken its discovery to finding a object approximately half the size of a Twix bar, with reflectivity similar to a Twix bar, illuminated by moon light, from 5000 miles away.

Having new horizon send back images of it can be likened to using transmitter transmitting with as much power as would be released if 1 average bacteria were to fall a distance of 1cm on earth gravity every second, and receiving the signal, differentiating it from background noise, and construct a image from the data it contains, from 5000 miles away.

Think of that.  12 watts.   Received and interpreted 4.4 billion miles away.

The new Nova episode that was just broadcast tonight was about the New Horizon mission including the Ultima Thule flyby. They talked about some of the difficulties tracking the object. One thing they did was try to catch it as it eclipsed various stars. They sent people to Argentina and South Africa to try to catch it, but their orbital calculations were off so they got nothing. They tried it again from the South Pacific with the SOFIA infrared telescope aboard a 747, but got nothing again. One more try a week later in Patagonia. This time they got the shadow with an array of 5 small (by their standards) telescopes. It was enough for them to make a crude estimate of the oblong shape. It also helped them refine the orbit calculation which let them refine the New Horizon's trajectory to allow for a closer pass.