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

Based on the last image, looks like it could be two objects.

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But because of the gravity assist from Jupiter and I believe Saturn, NH will never be further than voyager

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Correct. NH was launched from Earth at a higher velocity than the Voyagers were. The point was to require fewer slingshots (I think NH only made one at Jupiter) so the trip to Pluto wouldn't take decades. However, the multiple gravitational slingshots each Voyager made means that though NH left Earth at a higher velocity than the Voyagers did, the multiple gravitational slingshots that the Grand Tour required meant that the Voyagers ended up with a higher final velocity relative to the sun and NH can never end up farther away than the Voyagers barring some other outside influence.

This thread is SO much better than anything on the LSU Scoreboard right now

They’ll get better. Takes a long time to send back high res stuff but there should be pics semi comparable to Pluto

They better check their shutter speed.

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it is two objects touching each other.

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But are they actually banging or just dry humping?

Can someone explain to me how communication works in space? How does the craft send the "signal" and how does earth receive it? Obviously I know the craft sends information from an antenna and another antenna (on some space station?) receives it? Does the craft just broadcast the info in all directions or is it directional? How does RF travel through space? Is it slower or faster than travelling through atmosphere? I don't know anything about this stuff but it is very cool.

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Can someone explain to me how communication works in space? How does the craft send the "signal" and how does earth receive it? Obviously I know the craft sends information from an antenna and another antenna (on some space station?) receives it? Does the craft just broadcast the info in all directions or is it directional? How does RF travel through space? Is it slower or faster than travelling through atmosphere? I don't know anything about this stuff but it is very cool.

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It's just a radio. The spacecraft has a pretty tiny transmitter and antenna on it that it points directly at Earth and transmits a narrow beam of radio waves just toward Earth. The dish on the spacecraft may be 6-10 feet in diameter and the transmitter might be something like 25 Watts because weight and power are very expensive to come by on spacecraft. Since the spacecraft is sending a tightly focused narrow beam of radio toward Earth instead of broadcasting in all directions like a radio station would, the transmitter's power can be pretty low and get the job done. Most HAM radio operators have far more powerful transmitters than a spacecraft will

On the other end, to compensate for the low power the spacecraft is broadcasting, Earth has the Deep Space Network, which is comprised of MANY giant antennas that we can swivel and rotate to point directly at the spacecraft we want to listen to and gather the very weak signal from the spacecraft then feed it through powerful amplifiers to boost it and pick it up out of the noise.

Here's a picture of just one of the DSN antennas with a pickup truck next to it for scale.



There are three receiving stations on the planet (each with multiple large antennas) spaced roughly 120 degrees of longitude apart (one in California, one in Spain, and one in Australia), so that as the planet rotates, there is always an antenna available to point at any arbitrary part of the sky, minus the far northern and southern horizons where we really don't have spacecraft that would require the capabilities of the Deep Space Network.

To talk back to the spacecraft, we just reverse the process, except we don't have the power limitations the spacecraft does and can use transmitters that might be 1000 times more powerful than the spacecraft's to make sure that our signal is loud enough for its systems to hear us clearly from all that distance away.

As for speed, radio waves travel through the vacuum of space essentially just like they do through the atmosphere. Technically, though, radio waves move SLIGHTLY faster through the vacuum of space than the atmosphere, but not really enough to matter. After all, that signal just traveled billions of miles through empty space and only 100 or so miles through the atmosphere. Due to the low power from the spacecraft, the frequencies used, and the vast distances, the data transfer rate that the spacecraft can reliably transmit is very low, only about 1 kB/sec for New Horizons. The Voyagers, for comparison, which are about three times further out with less sophisticated equipment, can only manage about 150 or so bytes a second.

Theirs massive infrastructure, most is just here on earth though.