Interstellar Navigation Demonstrated for the First Time With NASA's 'New Horizons' (newscientist.com)
- Reference: 0178295204
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/06/155217/interstellar-navigation-demonstrated-for-the-first-time-with-nasas-new-horizons
- Source link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2486823-new-horizons-images-enable-first-test-of-interstellar-navigation/
And it's just performed the first ever example of interstellar navigation...
> As it hurtles out of our solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is so far from Earth that the stars in the Milky Way appear in markedly different positions compared with our own view... due to the parallax effect. This was [3]demonstrated in 2020 when the probe beamed back pictures of two nearby stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, to Earth.
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> Now, Tod Lauer at the US National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Arizona and his colleagues have used this effect to work out the position of New Horizons... Almost all spacecraft calculate their bearings to within tens of metres using NASA's Deep Space Network, a collection of radio transmitters on Earth that send regular signals out to space. In comparison, the parallax method was far less accurate, locating New Horizons within a sphere with a radius of 60 million kilometres, about half the distance between Earth and the sun. "We're not going to put the Deep Space Network out of business — this is only a demo proof of concept," says Lauer. However, with a better camera and equipment they could improve the accuracy by up to 100 times, he says.
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> Using this technique for interstellar navigation could offer advantages over the DSN because it could give more accurate location readings as a spacecraft gets further away from Earth, as well as being able to operate autonomously without needing to wait for a radio signal to come from our solar system, says Massimiliano Vasile at the University of Strathclyde, UK. "If you travel to an actual star, we are talking about light years," says Vasile. "What happens is that your signal from the Deep Space Network has to travel all the way there and then all the way back, and it's travelling at the speed of light, so it takes years."
Just like a ship's captain sailing by the stars, "We have a good enough three-dimensional map of the galaxy around us that you can find out where you are," Lauer says.
So even when limiting your navigation to what's on-board the spacecraft, "It's a remarkable accuracy, with your own camera!"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2486823-new-horizons-images-enable-first-test-of-interstellar-navigation/
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas-new-horizons-conducts-the-first-interstellar-parallax-experiment/
Avoid Wolf 359! (Score:2)
> This was demonstrated in 2020 when the probe beamed back pictures of two nearby stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, to Earth.
They better not be sending a probe to Wolf 359. It's not uncommon that I find myself yelling, "All hands abandon ship! I repeat, all hands abandon ship!" before I either get jabbed in the neck by Borg assimilation probes or the Enterprise explodes and I wake up in a cold sweat.
Trump admin is protecting you (Score:2, Troll)
This is why the big beautiful bill has cut funding for this project next year. You don't have to worry about the Borg if you don't look for them.
Re: (Score:3)
Lets say we get a signal warning us about the Borg the same way as presented in Contact. Assume full technical specs for whatever to save your race from being assimilated, with the added benefit of a compact risk free fusion powerplant and replicators to solve world hunger, and with clear warning that the Borgs estimated aria vial date of 2350. 20 decades to prepare effectively. At this point there would be supporters of the BORG looking for attention from the cameras on every high end school campus
Re: (Score:3)
This is pretty much the plot of The Three Body Problem.
Re: Trump admin is protecting you (Score:2)
Hey, why are some episodes suddenly missing from streaming?
Re: (Score:3)
> This is why the big beautiful bill has cut funding for this project next year. You don't have to worry about the Borg if you don't look for them.
Well, that approach has certainly worked with regards to Russia's state-sponsored hackers, amirite?
Proof of concept is one thing (Score:2)
Actually traveling to other star systems beyond the one we live in is impossible, besides not being able to bring enough fuel and food & water the distance is just way too far, even if the people that attempted this left earth as a toddler they would die of old age before they got there if they didn't die of lack of food & water fist
Generation ships would never work (Score:3)
Theres zero reason for generations born in space to have any interest in the original goal set by people who may be long dead anyway. Assuming they dont go insane or suffer debilitating effects of space flight and all die young. It makes great sci fi but ignores the reality of human nature both physical and emotional.
Re: (Score:3)
> Theres zero reason for generations born in space to have any interest in the original goal set by people who may be long dead anyway.
Would that really matter? It would be safe to assume members of those new generations would still have "I want to stay alive" as their primary goal and "I would prefer not to be alone, if possible" as a secondary goal - which in practice would align pretty well with the overall long-term goal of such missions.
Re: (Score:2)
> Theres zero reason for generations born in space to have any interest in the original goal set by people who may be long dead anyway.
If the goal is to find a new planet to call home I think that would resonate with a lot of the people on board a generational ship.
> Assuming they dont go insane or suffer debilitating effects of space flight and all die young.
Yes, maintaining scholastic discipline when you know you're just part of a long chain of generations is probably the key problem after solving the closed ecology & space travel issues.
> It makes great sci fi but ignores the reality of human nature both physical and emotional.
I haven't read any sci-fi where generational ships have worked completely as intended - it's essentially almost an accident that they arrive and can do anything at all mission related, mainl
Re: Proof of concept is one thing (Score:2)
Don't forget Von Neumann probes.
Re:Proof of concept is one thing (Score:4, Interesting)
We ran this with thought experiment, with economists to physicists in the room back in the 1990s. With a MR. Fusion technology, Something 100 times to 1M times bigger than the international space station on 50 year crise at .05C to is very technically feasible at $10/kg (2025 dollars) to LEO. The enemy of the mission is boredom, generations becoming to dumb to repair and, just plain water loss that allows crops fail in a way the seed bank is useless. The real problem is the communications from earth the next mission blowing past them at .3C about 2/3s of the way into the mission. The first launched interstellar travelers will probably land in a world with a greeting party of fellow earthlings from the 5th or 6th follow-up missions, that was a 10,000 x bigger and had a gravity ring with a dude ranch and cattle. Scifi counters these risks with deep sleeping people, but what super brilliant 20 year old is voluntarily going to sign a life away, their kids and their grandkids up for what could be a stuck in minivan sized living quarters for the next 100 years.
Just send 1M robotic space probes to 5k targets at .1C and tell the AI to look for the trash piles and dumpster fires before even bothering sending back a signal burst. My expectation is all civilizations float to a common mean of not my problem for this generation.
Re: (Score:2)
> Scifi counters these risks with deep sleeping people, but what super brilliant 20 year old is voluntarily going to sign a life away, their kids and their grandkids up for what could be a stuck in minivan sized living quarters for the next 100 years.
With potentially billions of 20-somethings on Earth to choose from for such a trip there's likely enough of them willing to volunteer to make this trip happen. What might be a selection criteria is some medical condition which makes having children impossible, or perhaps having some genetic anomaly where they'd pass on some undesirable condition if they did have children. A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that as many as 15% of couples are infertile, that sounds high but even if its only 1% then that's a
Re: (Score:2)
> Actually traveling to other star systems beyond the one we live in is impossible with current technology
FTFY. The actual feat is theoretical and we lack to proper technology to do it but that doesn't mean it's impossible because the roadblocks have real solutions.
The problem of fuel can be solved by using antimatter. Our present ability to generate antimatter sucks but that doesn't mean there isn't a far more efficient method. By using antimatter reactions to accelerated to relativistic speeds, the problem of time and supplies is exponentially reduced as time comes to a crawl near C for the passengers. Resour
Triangulation (Score:2)
for the win