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After flying a mysterious celestial body over more than 6.6 billion km from the Earth, at 3:33 (from Brasilia), the probe New Horizons returned to communicate with the Earth.
The radio signal that about 4 hours after the maximum approach, it took nearly six hours, traveling at the speed of light, to be received, first in the Madrid antenna of the Deep Space network then in the Mission Control Center. in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland
A big party erupted in the auditorium when telemetry numbers reappeared on the screens, indicating a contact at 1:31 pm. Just before confirming that all systems were working as expected, Alice Bowman, Mission Operations Manager, was whispering to her colleague, "Looks like we're back!", Probably referring to the same tension felt after flying over Pluto, in 2015.
Eight minutes later, Bowman would proclaim loudly this time: "We have a spaceship in good health." The announcement was followed by a great party at the control center.
Commemoration that had already begun the day before, with the overflight itself, almost at the turn of the tower. year As part of the holiday, astrophysicist Brian May, Queen's guitarist and scientist badociated with the mission, has released a new song in the honor of New Horizons. Check out the video clip with the special participation of the late Stephen Hawking.
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After the so-called home phone call, which only contains telemetry (the "vital signs") of the spacecraft, New Horizons picks up scientific data while moving away from small Ultima Thule to 50 000 km / h.
The first presentation of these results from the acute overflight phase takes place on Wednesday (2), but that day, the survey team commented on data collected shortly before. arriving at Ultima Thule, with some initial clues about the nature of this remaining object from the formation of the solar system.
What has been seen up to now, with the best image ever presented, taken at 800,000 km, suggests that the object is actually a binary contact, consisting of two acorns, as suggested by stellar occultation data extracted from telescopes on Earth. (It's always possible that it's two separate objects revolving around a common center of gravity, but everyone is betting that it's only an object. It should be about 32 km long by 16 km high. 19659010] http://mensageirosideral.blogfolha.uol.com.br/ "width =" 4800 "height =" 2700 "/>
We have also confirmed the hypothesis that the axis of rotation of the object corresponds approximately to the trajectory of New Horizons, which explains the lack of The rotation period is still uncertain, but it should last between 15 and 30 hours.
All this is illustrated by low resolution images, but as of Wednesday, the The story should be more appealing as the details of the surface begin to appear.
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