New Horizons completed the most distant space flyby in human history (Image added)

frickin Merica

Space is "big"...I've been home with a broken foot and watching all type science shows and the extent of the known universe is not something I can get my head around. I mean I can, but I cant. The theory that the universe began as a infinitely small singular piece of matter....whew

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NH visited Pluto over 3 years ago. It has taken that long to reach this object.

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Traffic is that slow in Baton Rouge, too.....

Voyager just cruised through space. It didn't specifically fly by targeted objects to take pictures like this is.

Voyager is still special though because it is still the only man made object zooming in inter-stellar space. Voyager2 is very close though. Last I heard it was passing through the heliosphere, which is the boundry.

ETA: if Nightflyers w real life, Voyager would be getting ready to encounter the Volcaryn right about now.

Gotcha. Planned intercepts are the distinction.

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Voyager is still special though because it is still the only man made object zooming in inter-stellar space. Voyager2 is very close though.

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Pioneer 10 is calculated to be farther out than Voyager 2, but not as far as Voyager 1, based on the last telemetry we have before its power source got too weak to power the radios. So we don't know for sure exactly where it is right now in relation to the heliopause, but we know about where it should be based on where it was, how fast it was moving, and how it should be slowing. Voyager 2 was moving faster than both Pioneers and has overtaken Pioneer 11 and will overtake Pioneer 10 as well in time. New Horizons is fast enough to overtake both Pioneers, but is slower and will never catch up to the Voyagers.

It's all a function of when they were launched and how much excess escape velocity they gathered after all the gravitational assists were complete. Basically, imagine that you have three cars. One leaves today doing 50 mph, one leaves in a year doing 75 mph and one leave in 2 years doing 100 mph. In the long run, the fastest car will always end up the farthest one away because it'll be able to catch up and pass all the ones that left before it, but it can never catch up to a faster car. Same rough principle, but with spacecraft and comparison of velocity in excess of escape velocity.

frick yeah I had that book too.

For some reason Kuiper Belt makes me think of the band Kyper

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Loved this book when I was young

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I had the same book...the probable alien life parts were cool, like the floaty jellyfish things on Jupiter and the divebomb pterydactyls that hunted them