A tad chilly

This has been going on for a couple hours now. The circulation center looks to be somewhat west of the Straits, but the cell is quite elongated along a north/south axis. There has been very little displacement of the center, just a slow migration eastward, so some of these little pop-up cells don't know which direction they want to go. I think the same one may have crossed over me 2 or 3 times, and it might be back again.

After a series of observations lasting 7 weeks, no potential hazards have been spotted that require adjusting New Horizons' optimal trajectory during its Pluto flyby.

Meanwhile, the "2" faces of Pluto have distinctly different looks in imaging seen thus far. The face sometimes referred to as "nearside" (because that's the face that will be toward New Horizons during the closest stages of the flyby and so will be the side imaged with the highest resolution) has a series of fairly evenly spaced dark spots, each about the size of Missouri.

The image shows Pluto and Charon. The differences in color are actual-- Charon is mostly dark and gray.

2 days ago New Horizons made its final speed adjustment burn, firing its thrusters for 23 seconds and increasing its velocity by 27 centimeters per second (about one-half mile per hour). Without the burn New Horizons would have reached its closest flyby point 20 seconds late and 114 miles off target.

Why does this matter on a spacecraft traveling more than 52,000 kilometers per hour at the highpoint of a (so-far) 9.5 year journey?

Because measurements of Pluto's atmospheric properties depend on radio signals that will be sent from Earth at precise times. Most of the observations will not be done continuously-- they'll be performed at specifc instants, with the expectation that the spacecraft will be at a particular distance and orientation to the planet at those instants for maximum results.

*zzzzzzz....woke up * say something CP ?*  yeah cool man, we are getting there and now that June is over, here is the results of the rains.

http://www.weatherzone.com.au/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=9225&list=ds&of=of_a&ot=ot_a&mm=06&yyyy=2015&sub=go

Wow. Talk about precision...

The areas surrounding the great lakes seem to have many odd weather patterns that are sometimes difficult to predict. I usually found those occurring at two general times-around the spring solstice and the autumnal equinox. 

Then again, my stepdad is a retired meteorologist. People would always ask him the forecast, and he would reply, "look out the window, and look at the calendar".

(I may have already mentioned that many pages and a few years ago)

A major hiccup for New Horizons 13 hours ago, one with potentially disastrous consequences. At 1:54 p.m. EDT contact was lost with New Horizons when it put itself into "safe mode" after recognizing something wrong during an internal check. This is the programmed response-- the spacecraft is supposed to terminate contact with Earth, go into "safe mode", boot up the backup computer, and then re-establish contact with Earth and transmit status data so any problem can be identified/rectified.

That process went as programmed, and contact was re-established through NASA's Deep Space Network at 3:15 p.m. EDT.

HOWEVER, trouble-shooting and recovering from whatever the problem is is expected to take from 1 to several days, and New Horizons cannot collect any data during that period! Closest flyby is only 9 days away, and every day between now and then becomes more important for data collection than the day before.

The Anomaly Review Board met at 4 p.m. EDT. There have been no updates since.

9.5 years without a glitch, and then this little cliffhanger a few days before the big payoff. Hang in there, New Horizons.

  Humphh!

  As long as it's taking pictures on the 14th, when its at its closest, and still sending them back, that's the main thing, imo.

if not is time to send in the cable guy to get it fix.

Yeah, there are two problems here. First, is whatever the problem is something permanent that will interfere with some/all data collection. And second, even if it isn't permanent, how long will it take to get things back to normal?

BTW, during the actual flyby New Horizons won't be sending back any data at all. The spacecraft can't acquire and send data at the same time-- it's one or the other. So during the crucial flyby period everything gets devoted to data collection and it gets sent to Earth later. Sort of anti-climactic, everyone counting down to a specific day, but on that day there won't be any new data to see even if everything is going perfectly.

They do a mini-transmission of some data once or twice a day until a few hours before the closest approach. just in case there's a collision or something that ends the mission. That way at least they'd get a little bit of data that was from near the closest point before the end.

Looking at the schedule, there were no images scheduled to be taken by New Horizons on July 4, but a few were scheduled for July 5 and at least some of those will likely be missed. Images on July 6 are a little more crucial, as they're used to calibrate and target images over the next few days. Also, images on July 5 are scheduled to be used to set light calibration curves for future imaging of the moons Nix and Hydra.

The Russian cargo ship docked successfully at the ISS at 3:11 a.m. EDT, delivering 6100 pounds of supplies.

That's a lot of Mar Bars.

At least they didn't send up any vegemite!

That would have been better ! 

I wonder if they will send it back and say "We prefer Marmite "  

Well this is sort of ironic timing. What happened on New Horizons yesterday was the on-board autopilot saw something it didn't like and cut communications and switched over to the backup computer in safe mode. That's what is supposed to happen, all during the entire 9.5-year mission thus far.

But when the highlight of the mission arrives you don't want the spacecraft shutting itself down for what might be only a minor glitch, or you can miss a crucial point like a closest approach, or an orbital insertion burn, etc. Thus they have an "encounter mode" program that overrides and prevents the possibility of going into safe mode. This encounter mode program gets sent and loaded to the spacecraft not long before the important part of its mission, and that way you don't have the spacecraft going into safe mode at the worst time. If the spacecraft has a problem after the encounter mode is loaded it will still report the problem and try to fix it, but it doesn't go into safe mode and shut down observations, it continues with as much as it can of its planned operations.

So here's the ironic part: today is the day they were scheduled to send up the "encounter mode" program to New Horizons, preventing any invocation of safe mode after that point. 

That sucks!!!!!!!!!!!

 A day late and a dollar short!    (haha, I don't know what the dollar short means.)