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I'm fascinated with space and on Tuesday a space probe called New Horizons will get as close as 12,500km to Pluto.
Pluto is basically a big rock that at one time was thought to be our furthest most planet of our solar system - but now is considered one of the biggest rocks of a band of many, many thousands of rocks that didn't quite manage to come together to make a proper planet when our Sun, Earth and the rest of our planets were born.
It's a long way a way - 4.7 BILLION kms from us - so much so - that the New Horizons probe can't be powered by solar panels - it's simply too far away from the Sun to catch the strength of the rays - and thus has to carry its own fuel - which in turn limits what power it has to do stuff.
Consequentially the probe dosen't have enough fuel to slow itself down - it's going at a staggering 14 kms per second (which lets be honest is nothing in space - in which distance is measured in how fast light travels!) so it will simply hurtle pass Pluto and carry on into infinity (and beyond, no doubt).
Again its power is so limited and the distance so far between the Nineth Rock from the Sun (so to speak - hope you saw what I did there!?) that the pictures it will take as it whizzes past in the next couple of days will take from now to nearly Christmas not this year but next (2016) for them all to be finally sent back to us!
Amazing stuff.
Wonderful what mankind can do when it looks up and forwards.
Pluto is basically a big rock that at one time was thought to be our furthest most planet of our solar system - but now is considered one of the biggest rocks of a band of many, many thousands of rocks that didn't quite manage to come together to make a proper planet when our Sun, Earth and the rest of our planets were born.
It's a long way a way - 4.7 BILLION kms from us - so much so - that the New Horizons probe can't be powered by solar panels - it's simply too far away from the Sun to catch the strength of the rays - and thus has to carry its own fuel - which in turn limits what power it has to do stuff.
Consequentially the probe dosen't have enough fuel to slow itself down - it's going at a staggering 14 kms per second (which lets be honest is nothing in space - in which distance is measured in how fast light travels!) so it will simply hurtle pass Pluto and carry on into infinity (and beyond, no doubt).
Again its power is so limited and the distance so far between the Nineth Rock from the Sun (so to speak - hope you saw what I did there!?) that the pictures it will take as it whizzes past in the next couple of days will take from now to nearly Christmas not this year but next (2016) for them all to be finally sent back to us!
Amazing stuff.
Wonderful what mankind can do when it looks up and forwards.
