Alert -- Pluto Science Data/Image Return to be Slow

Pluto science data return will be spotty and slow because of the immense distances involved, as explained in this link. Major portions won't be sent to Earth for months, all of it won't be back in a year.

We need to study it in anticipation of unavoidable accusations that amazing alien images are being concealed.

Particularly significant is that early 'first look' summary transmissions will involve compression that will produce jpeg artifacts -- be prepared for weird-looking stuff that isn't there.

Enough weird stuff WILL be there, it's easy to predict.

www.planetary.org...

a reply to: JimOberg

I saw on another site a photo of Pluto pointing out that there seems to be a face on Pluto similar to the "Man in the moon" likeness that people see. That may be one of those jpeg artifact images.

Yea sounds like a perfect and elusive way of saying; if we find something that is not part of the landscape we need to analyze, modify it, and possibly never show it until it's forgotten.

They kind of set them self up for that, especially you OP, given your second paragraph. Like some sort of "pre counter argument" to avoid exactly what they and you would want to avoid speculating about. .

Alien bases baby

a reply to: JimOberg

Oberg, you have just given us reasons to be suspicious of this whole business. I've gone through it with the situation of Phobos over the years where the actuality of the grooves have been ignored, downplayed, covered up, and never fully explained and now you tell us in advance that data is being withheld about Pluto to avoid speculation?

With Mars and Phobos, the delay of releasing data was handed off to Malin & co. and NAS/JPL told us, "Heck, our hands are tied, the data can no longer be immediately released because of his contract." --What a crock that was. With Pluto, the excuse is offered is that you justify withholding the data because you admit that it will cause speculation.

So here is another effort to withhold data that should be immediately put into the public domain since it is simple scientific data about natural processes on a natural body. Is that there is something to hide on Pluto?

Undue speculation about natural features on Pluto would be harmless and actually would help the program to prepare humanity for eventual contact with ETs whether those of the UFOs or found elsewhere. It would enliven the discussions and if worthless, they would soon pass. So why the concerns? Evidently, there is genuine reasons to suppress data about Pluto that is too revealing as was and still is the case for Phobos.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: JimOberg
So here is another effort to withhold data that should be immediately put into the public domain since it is simple scientific data about natural processes on a natural body. Is that there is something to hide on Pluto?

Withhold data? How dare you! Where do you get off accusing scientists and NASA of a conspiracy simply because it takes a long time to get data from a distant spacecraft! What part of this do you not understand? The bandwidth to the spacecraft is extremely limited and slowed because of the distance involved! They're not "withholding data," they themselves can't get it downloaded any faster! That's because of the physics of the situation, the spacecraft is many, many AU away. Its distance means the signal is very weak, which means it has to talk slowly to our dishes on the ground for them to be able to detect each bit of data. At best our huge 70 meter dishes can only talk to it at a rate of 1 kilobit per second.

"The short answer to that question is: Pluto is far away -- very far away, more than 30 times Earth's distance from the Sun -- so New Horizons' radio signal is weak. Weak signal means low data rates: at the moment, New Horizons can transmit at most 1 kilobit per second. (Note that spacecraft communications are typically measured in bits, not bytes; 1 kilobit is only 125 bytes.) Even at these low data rates, only the Deep Space Network's very largest, 70-meter dishes can detect New Horizons' faint signal."

www.planetary.org...

125 bytes per second. That's it. At that rate it would take a spacecraft at Pluto over 8 hours to download a single raw 2 megapixel image from my ST-2000XCM camera (which uses the same kind of CCD used on the Curiosity rover)! So yes, it will take a long time to get the data back from the spacecraft. That's what you SHOULD expect given these distances, it's not a conspiracy!!!!

a reply to: ngchunter

Got to expect that, as this site is made up by mostly paranoid members, you know the type everything is a conspiracy until proved otherwise BUT then the proof becomes a conspiracy

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: JimOberg

Oberg, you have just given us reasons to be suspicious of this whole business. .....now you tell us in advance that data is being withheld about Pluto to avoid speculation?

a reply to: JimOberg

I doubt that it would help

a reply to: ngchunter

You're not serious are you in treating us like kids in this serious business?

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: JimOberg

Oberg, you have just given us reasons to be suspicious of this whole business. .....now you tell us in advance that data is being withheld about Pluto to avoid speculation?

Oberg, is that the best you can do?

a reply to: Aliensun

With Mars and Phobos, the delay of releasing data was handed off to Malin & co. and NAS/JPL told us, "Heck, our hands are tied, the data can no longer be immediately released because of his contract." --What a crock that was.

This is how the Military/Industrial complex works. They get the data, keep the good stuff for themselves, and if they feel like it, release the crumbs to the ignorant public. I looked for images from SOFIA when it first went up, very little available. Then I found the bit about the primary contractor being under no obligation to release data/images within any set time, or ever.
There is still no image atlas for SOFIA, just selected data/images that really are just eye-candy.
Even much Apollo data was lost or 'accidentally' erased, so the Russians calling for an investigation is not about if they went to the Moon, but about the missing scientific data. The taxpayer funds all these projects, the Military/Industrial corporations get first dibs on the data, and feed us crumbs, if they feel like it. Sweet.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: ngchunter

You're not serious are you in treating us like kids in this serious business?

Well, you're acting like an ignorant kid. Clearly you don't understand how radio transmissions work over incredibly long distances or how signal strength affects transmission rate. This is basic spaceflight, not a conspiracy.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: Aliensun

With Mars and Phobos, the delay of releasing data was handed off to Malin & co. and NAS/JPL told us, "Heck, our hands are tied, the data can no longer be immediately released because of his contract." --What a crock that was.

This is how the Military/Industrial complex works. They get the data,

...at a rate of 125 bytes a second. 125 bytes, not kilobytes.

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: ngchunter

You're not serious are you in treating us like kids in this serious business?

Well, you're acting like an ignorant kid. Clearly you don't understand how radio transmissions work over incredibly long distances or how signal strength affects transmission rate. This is basic spaceflight, not a conspiracy.

Strangely enough, you want to zero in on this time lag that virtually EVERYBODY understands.
The old "straw man" argument. Just do as the rocketman does, go off in being irreverent. 'Course both tactics ignore the primary discussion.

originally posted by: Aliensun

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: ngchunter

You're not serious are you in treating us like kids in this serious business?

Well, you're acting like an ignorant kid. Clearly you don't understand how radio transmissions work over incredibly long distances or how signal strength affects transmission rate. This is basic spaceflight, not a conspiracy.

Strangely enough, you want to zero in on this time lag that virtually EVERYBODY understands.

It's not really about the "time lag," it's about bandwidth and signal strength limitations caused by the distance. If all the data could arrive at once with ONLY the light delay as a consideration it wouldn't be much of an issue. We'd have all the data within a day. That is not the case here, but the limitations I just described ARE the subject of the thread. If that's not what you want to talk about then perhaps this isn't the right thread for you. This IS the primary discussion.

This paragraph sounds so unscientific/unspecific at first glance.

Data will arrive on Earth in a series of downlinks. Downlink sessions can last as long as about 8 hours, but are usually somewhat shorter. Whenever New Horizons is downlinking data, it can't take new photos, so the downlinks get shorter and less frequent as the spacecraft gets close to the time of the flyby, when it concentrates on collecting as much data as possible. Because data downlinks are slow, there will be much less data downlinked than New Horizons has stored on board. After data is downlinked, it must be processed before posting online. How long that will take is not yet known.

However, I suppose that the fact it was launched almost 10 years ago, which REALLY means the tech was at least 15 years old if not more, explains some of the doubts.

Not sure why we get a heads up in quite this manner though, or am I? Yes, I think I am.

Anyway, good news is information is on its way.

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: Aliensun

With Mars and Phobos, the delay of releasing data was handed off to Malin & co. and NAS/JPL told us, "Heck, our hands are tied, the data can no longer be immediately released because of his contract." --What a crock that was.

This is how the Military/Industrial complex works. They get the data,

...at a rate of 125 bytes a second. 125 bytes, not kilobytes.

Which is almost twice as slow as old computer dialup modems from the 1980s. It's remarkable we get anything useful at those speeds which is why there is a lot of planned research at NASA into advanced higher bandwidth forms of communication over long distances.

I doubt this will mean a thing to most of the NASA conspiracy theorists on ATS but I'm just putting that out there.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: Aliensun


Even much Apollo data was lost or 'accidentally' erased,

So how much is much to GaryN, want to tell everybody

If they really wanted to hide things they wouldn't even tell you about the mission.

Thinking like yours just goes to show you don't need 2 neurons to think up a conspiracy

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: Aliensun

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: ngchunter

You're not serious are you in treating us like kids in this serious business?

Well, you're acting like an ignorant kid. Clearly you don't understand how radio transmissions work over incredibly long distances or how signal strength affects transmission rate. This is basic spaceflight, not a conspiracy.

Strangely enough, you want to zero in on this time lag that virtually EVERYBODY understands.

It's not really about the "time lag," it's about bandwidth and signal strength limitations caused by the distance. If all the data could arrive at once with ONLY the light delay as a consideration it wouldn't be much of an issue. We'd have all the data within a day. That is not the case here, but the limitations I just described ARE the subject of the thread. If that's not what you want to talk about then perhaps this isn't the right thread for you. This IS the primary discussion.

There you go again, trying to shift the discussion away from the point. The true subject of the thread was not the problem of telemetry limits but the fact that some people, so rocketman says, will be unwilling to accept the official explanations and that the announcement beforehand was an preemptive strike which some of us saw as suspicious given other efforts going back at least to the Viking missions to suppress, ignore and disclaim evidence contrary to an official stance.

The recent lack of a full release of info on light spots on Ceres is another issue that points out that supposedly innocent, scientific data is being censored from the general public if not other members in the scientific community not directly connected to such programs. And then, there were the discoveries decades ago of pulsars and then quasars that were withheld from the general public.

--Is it a surprising that we are suspicious of what we are told when the UFO controversy has never been publicly tackled by science when obviously it has the ability to solve that pressing question (if government would let it)?

originally posted by: ngchunter

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: Aliensun

With Mars and Phobos, the delay of releasing data was handed off to Malin & co. and NAS/JPL told us, "Heck, our hands are tied, the data can no longer be immediately released because of his contract." --What a crock that was.

This is how the Military/Industrial complex works. They get the data,

...at a rate of 125 bytes a second. 125 bytes, not kilobytes.

People don't remember dial up and taking 30 minutes to download a 3MB song...