Jupiter Fly-By and how it has changed

originally posted by: firerescue
a reply to: BrianFlanders

ITS CALLED BANDWITH ………

Figure the number of pixels per picture, then multiple by 24 or 30 times a second to get a streaming video

Transmitting streaming video at this distance would consume enormous amount of power

Solar cells at this distance are not efficient Probes use radio isotope generators employing decay heat from
Plutonium to power a spacecraft systems

More power means larger heavier spacecraft

Transmission times back to earth take minutes if not hours to arrive

And they talk about sending people to Mars. LOL

a reply to: BrianFlanders

It is rather far away BrianFlanders, like someone else suggested bandwidth limitations and power requirements are the reason the images are transmitted back to Earth in this manner.

The fact that we can return any sort of meaningful complex information at such extended distance is wondrous in itself.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Mars would be like a day trip compared to Manned travel to Jupiter.

Apples and Oranges buddy.

originally posted by: KansasGirl
So it's solid? Jupiter is a solid mass?

We really don't know, but from the available information it is thought that there is some kind of "core", down there somewhere. Nobody knows how deep it is, nobody knows what it is made of. Because of the pressures, it might be more of a metallic liquid rather than a solid "rock" of material.

But (our best science tells us) it is not just all gas through and through.

I think of all the matter in the form of dust and comets and meteors that enters Jupiters atmosphere for billions of years (Earth alone takes on a few tons of dust everyday just by "plowing right through it" during its path through space) and all that must end up somewhere. Anything that isnt a gas would get sucked into the "core".

motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbdzn3/physicists-discover-how-an-exotic-form-of-ice-grows-at-over-1000-miles-per-hour

motherboard.vice.com...

originally posted by: FlyingFox
motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbdzn3/physicists-discover-how-an-exotic-form-of-ice-grows-at-over-1000-miles-per-hour

motherboard.vice.com...

Are you saying there could be exotic ice deep within Jupiter?

originally posted by: FlyingFox
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_VII

en.wikipedia.org...

Is that anything like Kurt Vonnegut's fictional "Ice-Nine"? I hope not.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

If we only had such a wonderful flyby of the earth...

a reply to: zatara

Have you seen the HD videos from the ISS. They are amazing also. Just do a search for ISS.

High Definition Earth-Viewing System (HDEV)

This ^^

Also, ISS astronauts set the cameras up to take time-lapse photos, and people like Sean Doran assemble them into a video, or even use processing techniques to recreate a real-time video:



www.youtube.com...

Latest ISS photos: eol.jsc.nasa.gov...

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: BrianFlanders

Mars would be like a day trip compared to Manned travel to Jupiter.

Apples and Oranges buddy.

Quite right.

At its closest distance to Earth, Mars is about 35 million miles away. Jupiter at its closest distance is about 365 million miles from Earth. That's more than 10 times further away.

And those distances don't really tell the story of how far a spacecraft needs to go to get there because of the path a craft actually takes is more like getting into an elliptical orbit around the Sun the will eventually cross with Mars or Jupiter. That elliptical path makes for a much farther distance. That path is call a Hohmann Transfer Orbit (click for link) and is used because we don't have spacecraft with the fuel capacity to go straight to Mars or Jupiter.

It would take far more fuel to go the shorter straight to a planet than it does to take the long elliptical path. That's because of the angular momentum a spacecraft has when it leaves Earth -- momentum given to it by the Earth, which is moving at 65,000 mph as it orbits the Sun.

Instead of trying to work against that momentum and go straight to Mars or Juiter (which requires lots of fuel), we choose to work with that momentum and partially us the orbital path given to it by the orbit of Earth.