Datacasting is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital television, but may also be applied to digital signals on analog TV or radio. It generally does not apply to data which is inherent to the medium, such as PSIP data which defines virtual channels for DTV or direct broadcast satellite systems; or to things like cable modem or satellite modem, which use a completely separate channel for data.
Datacasting often provides news, weather, traffic, stock market, and other information which may or may not relate to the program[s] it is carried with. It may also be interactive, such as gaming, shopping, or education. An electronic program guide is usually included, although this stretches the definition somewhat, as this is often considered inherent to the digital broadcast standard.
The ATSC, DVB and ISDB standards allow for broadband datacasting via DTV, though they do not necessarily define how. The overscan and VBI are used for analog TV, for moderate and low bandwidths (including closed captioning in the VBI) respectively. DirectBand and RDS/RBDS are medium and narrow subcarriers used for analog FM radio. The EUREKA 147 and HD Radio standards both allow for datacasting on digital radio, defining a few basics but also allowing for later expansion.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
THE LAST SUPPER---THE DA VINCI CODE
Well as you all know The last Supper has a special plce in Christanity.
But there is another side of this !!!!As you can see frm the pic that Da vinci has drawn.It can be seen tht on the right of Jesus lies her holyness Mary Magnadalene.
And you can see there is not one bowl but 13 for 13 people.Also an anonymous hand over Mary or Rose or Holy Grail as she is called.
IN THE WORDS OF DAN BROWN :
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, The Last Supper
Millions of people have read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and have been caught up in its story. What is true? What is fiction? Clearly some things are true. There was a painting, The Last Supper, done by Leonardo da Vinci. There are organizations called Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. But is there really a global conspiracy to hide the living descendants of Jesus Christ?
These pages help to explore the issues brought out by the book. None of these are new issues to scholars. The role in the Church in putting down pagans and women over the centuries is well documented. The theological gatherings which occurred over the years to decide which of the hundreds of gospels to include in each religions "defined set of beliefs" are also well documented. In fact, "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" published in 1982 had the EXACT same message as Da Vinci Code. It talked about Mary M having Jesus' child and that child becoming part of the Merovingian dynasty. HBHG became a best seller and launched fierce debates. Interestingly, the authors thought this funny because the subject had already been beaten to death only 20 years before. The exact same topic was written about in 1993 by A.N. Wilson and again caused debate. In a foreword added to HBHG in 1996, the authors comment, "In another few years, the suggestion [of Mary/Jesus and child] will undoubtedly be made again by another author; and the media will undoubtedly prove as forgetful of Wilson's book as they were of ours." How true!
Please take time to explore this site - but also to then go out and READ the source material such as the appropriate Bible passages and books on Leonardo da Vinci's life. It is only by reading such material first hand that you can truly decide for yourself what to believe.
You, the reader, should not devour my site to say "Lisa is right". My intention is for you to read my site to see what thousands of people find to be in question - people who cared enough to write me and discuss it with me. This entire site began with a single page, and a single picture of the painting. Everything else grew due to user questions. After you've read through the questions and comments, then you should go and research the answers for yourself.
Don't believe the web. Don't believe this website. Look through the questions people ask, and then find the answers from a real source - the actual source materials of the Bible, of Lenardo's writings and works. This site should merely provide you starting points to investigate.
Note that real scholars call the painter "Leonardo". The "da Vinci" just means that he came from the Vinci area. To call him "Da Vinci" would be like calling "Joan of Arc" by the name "of Arc". Nobody says "Hey did you see that movie about Of Arc? It was pretty good!"
HISTORY OF THE DA VINCI CODE :
originally did research on the Merovingian Kings when writing about the Matrix - Bible connections. You can Read my Matrix Notes Here. Merovingian is the name of the 'power man' in the Matrix series, the one with the sexy wife, Perseophone. It was no accident that the Matrix featured the Merovingian name and background in their series, because most of the movie had very strong Biblical references.
The Merovingian Kings were rulers in what is now France from 481 through 752. In history, the Merovingians were a dynasty in what is now France, which was at the time called the Frankish area. The name was given to them because of Merovius (also known as Merovech), who began the family, and who attained near mythical status with his skills and feats. His descendants all proudly called themselves Merovingians.
The Merovingians were thrown out of power by the Pope in 751 with the "Donation of Constantine" - where they were called pagans and renounced. The Pope feared their power and replaced them with the Carolingian dynasty, of which Charlemagne was a member. Still, they worked on in secret, claiming to have direct bloodlines to Jesus Christ (through Mary Magdalene, his lover) and wanting to redeem themselves. They felt the Papacy had become a refuge for thieves and liars, and that it fattened itself on the profits it made from the poor. The Merovingians wanted to return Christianity to its for-the-people roots.
The Knights Templar and Freemasons, who came from the same background, continued to work towards freeing the "real people" from the bureaucracy and control of the established Catholic church, and to allow the power of the Messiah to help and touch the people.
The Merovingian family is famous for their connections with the Knights Templar, and the Search for the Holy Grail. It was even said that Merovius' ancestors came from Atlantis, and were from the stock of a race of very intelligent, powerful, caring people. Merovius (the historical ruler) claimed to have documented that he was descended from Jesus and Mary. Of course that documentation was never shown or saved :)
Little is actually known about Merovius, and many Pagan god attributes somehow got assigned to Merovius' history. Gregory of Tours (538-594) was the Bishop of Tours and wrote about Merovius in his "History of the Franks". Note that Gregory was writing this history a full 100 or more years after it happened. Gregory claims that Merovius was the child of Chlodio the Longhair, who was a chief of a Frankish tribe. Merovius claimed both Chlodio and a "sea monster" as being his dual fathers. The sea monster was part of the pagan legend. Note that because Chlodio had long hair, his sons all wore long hair as well and felt it gave them power. Sampson, anyone? Chlodio's (426-447) claim to fame is that he wrestled control of Cambrai back from the Roman guards there.
Gregory says that Chlodio's father was Pharamond, who lived in the early 400s. Pharamond is usually listed as the "first" leader of the Salian Franks, and came from the Germany region. Pharamond's legacy is that he pushed towards France over the Rhine river valley to extend his control. However, historians are not sure if these connections are true or myths. Nothing is known about Pharamond's parentage.
So in any case, there is no proof that Merovius was at all related to Mary. Heck, there's no proof that Merovius was fathered by a sea monster either. There's no proof where Mary went after the crucifixion. The Merovians were claiming links to pagan gods, to sea monsters, and to Mary at various times in their careers. They really seemed to be after power and wanted to justify it in whatever language suited the moment.
Again, to reiterate, there IS no documentation linking Mary to ANYONE. The Merovingians claimed that they came from Mary's bloodline - but they also claimed they came from Atlantis and from sea creatures at other times. The earliest known Merovingian king was back in the 400s - nothing at all is known or documented about his parentage.
Merovius' Line
Merovius had a child, Childeric I. Childeric is much more documented historically. That's because Chidleric took over Gaul in 456 when the Romans were good at documenting things. It's also because Childeric wasn't a very nice guy. He kept using royal powers to get his hands on the young maidens in his kingdom, and the parents became furious with him and kicked him out. Childeric managed to regain power, and run off with the wife of a friend of his. He had a son with her, Clovis, and died in 481.
Clovis fought many wars, married Clotilda in 493, and was baptized. He became the first "Christian" ruler of this area. He died in 511.
Note that this line goes down through generations to Charlemagne, the famous King of the Franks, born in 747. From Charlemagne is goes down through more generations to Eleanor of Acquitaine who married Henry II, King of England.
Also note that the Merovingians INVADED Paris in the 500s, but they most certainly did not FOUND it as claimed in Da Vinci Code :) Paris was first a village named Lutetia Parisiorum and then the Romans came in and turned it into a city. Which the Merovingians took over.
From a Visitor -
One Question though. Is the description of the Grail and the the contents (i.e.Tomb of Mary m, and historical documents to prove blood line.) based on fact or was it poetic licence by Dan Brown. I am very intrigued with this line of knowledge, and would like to learn more
My Response -
There are no historic documents from that time that say anything about Pharamond's parents. So any claims of information about his parents were invented after the fact. If anybody does know of documents saying ANYTHING about who Pharamond's parents were that are HISTORICALLY MEANINGFUL, they would become world famous, as it is something many people are curious about.
From a Visitor -
You state (repeatedly) that there is NO documentation linking anyone to Mary M. In light of the 'spirit of conspiracy' shouldn't that be "there is no KNOWN documentation ..." ;-)
My Response -
Actually what I say repeatedly is that there is no proof, which means "known facts" :) It's like saying that until recently we had no proof that Mary M ever wrote a gospel. That is true. Now we have found some proof and that situation has been remedied. Sure, the truth could exist out there somewhere. Or it could not exist in any documentation anywhere, found or unfound. Right now we have theories, and maybe someday we'll have proof. Or maybe someday we won't. Only time will tell. But given how human beings love to research and trumpet their claims. I find it REALLY hard to believe that someone knows something about the parentage of the Merovingian kings and has somehow kept it hidden all these years - when many of those very kings were VERY very eager to prove their ties to the Mary M line. Of course if we just knew where the body of Mary was buried, maybe we could do DNA testing and settle it pretty easily. With Jesus having "no body" and his father being a mystical spirit, the only DNA we could test would be Mary's.
From a Visitor -
One of your lines stated that there was no information anywhere to support the view that the Merovingians (did I spell that right?) came from Mary M. Could it be possible that we haven't been given all the information if there really is a group that prays to her? It may be a little too conspiracy theory, but I never rule out anything I can't prove by being there myself.
My Response -
Lots of groups pray to Mary!! That doesn't involve secret information. The Merovingians and many after them would have LOVED to have proven their claims of relations. You really would think if they were so gung-ho to prove this relationship and if ANY proof had existed anywhere that they would have gotten it, being the kids (grandkids etc). If *they* couldn't produce this proof, I find it unlikely that some other people had it and were somehow keeping it from them. Those Merovingians were pretty powerful people. Who knows, some documents could still exist somewhere in the world. Heck, we just found those gnostic gospels in a jar in Egypt after how many thousands of years. But it becomes less and less likely as time goes by.
From a Visitor -
A number of legends associate the Merovingian kings with the royal bloodline of Jesus and Magdalene. One of their myths is that the ancestress of the Merovingians was a mermaid and another says that the mother of Merovee' was impregnated by a sea monster. In each of these myths, the prevailing kernel of truth seems to be that this ancestry is "half man, half fish." Since Christ was known to early Christians as the "ICHTHYS" and Mary Magdalene was identified with the shape known as the "Vessel of the Fish".
OPUS DEI :
In the Dan Brown book Da Vinci Code, there are all sorts of comments about Opus Dei and their shadowy attempts to hide or discover the truth about Jesus and Mary M. Just what is going on here?
Many people have pointed out the great fiction of the conspiracies with Opus Dei. These are CLEARLY fiction. There are plenty of REAL mysterious groups out there he could have used, but he chose to use one that is incredibly bland. Maybe he did that on purpose so he wouldn't get sued or stalked :)
Opus Dei in fact Has an Official Website at OpusDei.org - hardly secret :) They are very recent - founded in 1928 by Josemaria Escriva. Josemaria was only 26 at the time, and was a Catholic Priest. He died in 1975 and has since been canonized.
In essence, Opus Dei is about real, ordinary people dedicating their life to God's work. It wants every person to "be a saint". There are courses and seminars held to this goal, but it is about people being in the modern, daily world, helping the world be a better place. Opus Dei members don't go off to mountaintops. They are married, have jobs, raise families, but do the best they can to honor God at every moment in their lives.
Only 2% of Opus Dei members are priests. The rest are "average, every day" people that have a focus on doing God's work. There are no vows or commitments, just a resolution to do the best they can to help others. The statutes of Opus Dei specifically forbid secrecy about the organization - the purpose of the organization is to spread the word of God and to help others.
ON THE DOWN SIDE: Opus Dei is pretty clearly fascist. They supported the efforts of Hitler and Mussolini to "stamp out communism" and the extreme steps they took. They read their members' mail and control their thoughts. From their book "The Way": "You shall not buy books without the advice of an experienced Christian. It is so easy to buy something useless or mischievous. Often people believe they are carrying a book under their arm ... but they only carry a load of mud." So you can only read what they allow you to read. I doubt they would allow their members to read The Da Vinci Code :)
Also, they tend to be anti-woman. This quote came from a leader at a meeting in 1994: "Woman are so sinful and are responsible that we have been dislodged from the Garden of Eden. And the only possibility for them to lessen their guilt is by subordinating themselves... You should be like a carpet where people can step onto". I don't THINK so!! :)
From a Visitor -
First off, very intersting site. Sites like this are great for this growing debate. You seem to have many view points and I'm wondering about your facts. You seem very certain that all the information you come across is 100% accurate. There are many sites dedicated to exposing the negative side of Opus Dei. I am not putting them down, but I do not believe they are the happy-go-lucky God loving people you make them out to be, or else why would so many be screaming about them.
My Response -
Certainly no group - not the Mormons or Opus Dei or any other - is perfect. They all have flaws. But Opus Dei's flaws are pretty public and their entire organization is always under scrutiny. The kinds of flaws they have are of the generic church-power kind and not of the secret-cult kind :)
From a Visitor -
I wish on commend you on your site. It is exactly what is needed to put "The DaVinci Code" into proper perspective. My younger cousin passed me the book and asked me "Is this all real?". I have since given her your url.
Regarding the Opus Dei, a book worth reading is "Their Kingdom Come" by Robert Hutchison. ISBN 0-552-14186-0. I find that too many opponents of the Opus Dei suffer convenient heart attacks, including Pope John Paul I. The church would be very different today if he had lived and made his changes. Dan's book might have had to use another bogeyman instead :-).
Thanks again for a very informative and useful site.
My Response -
For those who aren't familiar with the story, Pope John Paul I was born as Albino Luciani in 1912 in Italy, a sickly child who was at risk of death almost immediately. By 1958 he was a bishop of Vittorio Veneto. In 1969, Pope Paul VI named him "Patriarch of Venice". He was a cardinal in 1973. On August 6, 1976, Pope Paul VI died. John Paul was officially elected on August 26, 1976. He gave one radio message, had a welcoming ceremony, and then died of a heart attack on September 28. So he was "in office" a mere month and two days.
Many have said he was poisoned for various political reasons, and this event was even used as plot in Godfather III. While Paul VI was very against birth control (as is the current pope), John Paul was a liberal who wanted to allow it. John Paul also wanted to clean up the finances and kick out many Masonic-tied cardinals. He was just about to announce the list of people to oust, but he never got the chance to. He suddenly dropped dead and the lists were put away. No autopsy was ever done, even though many said the reason for his heart attack was an overdose of digitalis. Sister Vincenzia, who found the body, was forced to take a vow of silence.
Polls have shown that 30% of Italians believe that John Paul was assassinated.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
HipHip Hurrah!!!!!!
Friends its been a year after i started this blog.This blog has become a great success in India as a science and Technology blog.
I hope this blog will go on the same way and will make a record number of years in this internet world and hope i get noted as one of the best bloggers of the world.
Mind you all this has happened only because of you,my friends who have kept a track of the updates and given me the valuable suggestions to make this fav. blog of ours much better.
I thank one and all of you and hope you have the same track of my blog as you did in this first year.....!!!!!!
You can also have about me from Hi5.com
Thanking you your friend........Eshwar Prasad.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Saturday, April 01, 2006
SECOND ODI
The second ODI between India and England was played on 31-03-2006.
India won the match by 4-wickets
The star of the day is 19 year old,Suresh Raina who was 81-not out in 89 balls
scores:
England: 226-all out(49.5 overs)
India:230-6(49)
India won the match by 4-wickets
The star of the day is 19 year old,Suresh Raina who was 81-not out in 89 balls
scores:
England: 226-all out(49.5 overs)
India:230-6(49)
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
India win first match
India won its first match against England played in Delhi in its 7 match series taking a lead of 1-0
Scores:
India:203-all out
England:164-all out
Scores:
India:203-all out
England:164-all out
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Wi-MAX update
Amendments to the standard
An amendment to the standard, 802.16e, addressing mobility was concluded in 2005. This is sometimes called “Mobile WiMAX”, and should not be confused with 802.20, the planned standard for Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) itself probably some years away. Although different standards, the goals of 802.16e and 802.20 are similar.
Further amendments are in development including:
• 802.16f – Management Information Base
• 802.16g - Management Plane Procedures and Services
Amendments at pre-draft stage:
• 802.16h - Improved Coexistence Mechanisms for License-Exempt Operation
• 802.16i - Mobile Management Information Base
Certification
Because the IEEE only sets specifications but does not test equipment for compliance with them, the WiMAX Forum runs a certification program wherein members pay for certification. WiMAX certification by this group is intended to guarantee compliance with the standard and interoperability with equipment from other manufacturers. The mission of the Forum is to promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products.
Broadband wireless access is a technology aimed at providing wireless access to data networks, with high data rates. According to the 802.16-2004 standard, broadband means 'having instantaneous bandwidth greater than around 1 MHz and supporting data rates greater than about 1.5 Mbit/s'. From the point of view of connectivity, broadband wireless access is equivalent to broadband wired access, such as ADSL or cable modems. It is planned to be used in the next few years and is estimated to have a range of 50km (30 miles).
Most widely used technologies are LMDS and MMDS. One particular broadband wireless access technology is being standardized by IEEE 802.16 also known as WiMAX.
Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP) are usually found in rural areas where cable or DSL is not available. A common case scenario is that a WISP will get large connection such as a T1 or DS3 and deliver it to a high point in the area such as a high rise or water tower. Then the consumers will mount a small dish to the roof of their home or office and point it towards the high area. Line of site is usually necessary for wireless access to work.
A wireless connection can be either licensed or unlicensed. In the US, licensed connections use a private spectrum the user has secured rights to from the FCC. In other countries, spectrum is licensed from the country's national radio communications authority (such as the ACMA in Australia). Licensing is usually expensive and often reserved for large companies who wish to guarantee private access to spectrum for use in point to point communication. Because of this, most wireless ISP's use unlicensed spectrum which is publicly shared and therefore more prone interference.
An amendment to the standard, 802.16e, addressing mobility was concluded in 2005. This is sometimes called “Mobile WiMAX”, and should not be confused with 802.20, the planned standard for Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) itself probably some years away. Although different standards, the goals of 802.16e and 802.20 are similar.
Further amendments are in development including:
• 802.16f – Management Information Base
• 802.16g - Management Plane Procedures and Services
Amendments at pre-draft stage:
• 802.16h - Improved Coexistence Mechanisms for License-Exempt Operation
• 802.16i - Mobile Management Information Base
Certification
Because the IEEE only sets specifications but does not test equipment for compliance with them, the WiMAX Forum runs a certification program wherein members pay for certification. WiMAX certification by this group is intended to guarantee compliance with the standard and interoperability with equipment from other manufacturers. The mission of the Forum is to promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products.
Broadband wireless access is a technology aimed at providing wireless access to data networks, with high data rates. According to the 802.16-2004 standard, broadband means 'having instantaneous bandwidth greater than around 1 MHz and supporting data rates greater than about 1.5 Mbit/s'. From the point of view of connectivity, broadband wireless access is equivalent to broadband wired access, such as ADSL or cable modems. It is planned to be used in the next few years and is estimated to have a range of 50km (30 miles).
Most widely used technologies are LMDS and MMDS. One particular broadband wireless access technology is being standardized by IEEE 802.16 also known as WiMAX.
Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP) are usually found in rural areas where cable or DSL is not available. A common case scenario is that a WISP will get large connection such as a T1 or DS3 and deliver it to a high point in the area such as a high rise or water tower. Then the consumers will mount a small dish to the roof of their home or office and point it towards the high area. Line of site is usually necessary for wireless access to work.
A wireless connection can be either licensed or unlicensed. In the US, licensed connections use a private spectrum the user has secured rights to from the FCC. In other countries, spectrum is licensed from the country's national radio communications authority (such as the ACMA in Australia). Licensing is usually expensive and often reserved for large companies who wish to guarantee private access to spectrum for use in point to point communication. Because of this, most wireless ISP's use unlicensed spectrum which is publicly shared and therefore more prone interference.
Friday, February 24, 2006
WiMAX is an acronym that stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, a certification mark for products that pass conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 standards.
WiMAX is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. WiMAX can be used for a number of applications, including "last mile" broadband connections, hotspots and cellular backhaul, and high-speed enterprise connectivity for business.
Products that pass the conformity tests for WiMAX are capable of forming wireless connections between them to permit the carrying of internet packet data. It is similar to WiFi in concept, but has certain improvements that are aimed at improving performance and should permit usage over much greater distances. A WIMAX wireless internetmap of coverage is being publicly developed now.
IEEE 802.16 is working group number 16 of IEEE 802, specializing in point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access.
The 802.16 family of standards has been dubbed “WiMAX” by an industry group called the The WiMAX Forum. The mission of the Forum is to promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products. The acronym WiMAX expands to "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access".
Sunday, February 12, 2006
HERE I AM..............
This is me, eshwar prasad 6ft tall and aiming to become the president of india by 2020
Sunday, February 05, 2006
NEW HORIZON space exploration to PLUTO
Alan Stern is 45 years old. He was 32 when serious planning began for a mission to Pluto, which he just learned has been quietly and formally approved. He'll be 57 when the spacecraft he and others have been promoting finally gets there.
Will the long road to Pluto, a popular planet with both children and scientists and the only one never visited by a spacecraft, be worth the quarter-century wait?
"Past experience in planet exploration has consistently proved the value of reconnaissance missions for revolutionizing our view," Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, told SPACE.com. "Yes it'll be worth the wait, and then some."
Stern calls New Horizons "the first exploration of the third zone of the solar system," the region beyond both the terrestrial planets and the giant planets.
Deep freeze
As the mission heads toward launch in 2006, Pluto is headed for a deep freeze, moving farther from the Sun each day on its 248-year, elliptical orbit. So Stern and his colleagues at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are now in a race against time to design and build a craft, launch it, and gather precious data and pictures before the planet's atmosphere freezes out for two centuries.
New Horizons is set to arrive in 2015.
Since 1989, Pluto has been moving away from the Sun. In 1999, it crossed the orbital path of Neptune, repeating an age-old exchange that once again made Pluto the most distant planet in our solar system. One average, Pluto is 39.5 times farther from the Sun than is Earth.
It is a world upon which little solar energy lands and about which even less is known.
No telescope or spacecraft has ever snapped a good picture of Pluto. Even the venerable Hubble Space Telescope sees no more than a blur. Pluto's atmosphere is therefore an enigma, its surface only vaguely understood. Astronomers don't know how or even under what circumstances Pluto formed.
As planets go, Pluto is small and strange. As icy rocks go, however, Pluto appears to be large but otherwise common in a region of space littered with them.
Planet or just a rock?
The inner solar system contains four rocky, so-called terrestrial planets, Mars being the outermost. Pluto, a world of rock and ice, resides at the edge of a region of the solar system noted for giant planets made not of rock but of gas or ice. More specifically, Pluto roams a region riddled with thousands of rocky, icy objects that resemble both asteroids and comets.
These Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs, as they are called, were first suggested to exist by Gerard Kuiper about five decades ago. The first KBO was discovered in 1992. They are now known to populate a vast swath of space beyond the orbit of Neptune. There may be 100,000 of them bigger than 62-miles (100 kilometers) across, researchers say.
Stern calls the Kuiper Belt the big brother to the Asteroid Belt, which is positioned between Mars and Jupiter.
Pluto, found by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, would have been classified as a KBO instead of a planet were it discovered today, most astronomers agree. Here are some of the supporting reasons:
Pluto's orbit is not at all circular. Its distance from the Sun, called orbital eccentricity, varies by 25 percent. The 1,430-mile-wide (2,300-kilometer) rocky world also zooms high above and below the plane along which Earth and the other planets orbit. Astronomers refer to this as orbital inclination, and Pluto's is a whopping 17.1 degrees.
The oddities don't stop there. Pluto is the only planet whose moon is big enough -- Charon is roughly half the size of Pluto -- to draw the planet into a visibly significant binary orbit: The two objects orbit around a midpoint that is in the space between them. Some scientists refer to this as a double-planet system.
The Odd Planet Out
Eccentricity
Pluto's distance from the Sun varies by 25 percent. In 1999, Pluto crossed the orbital path of Neptune to become, once again, the most distant planet in the solar system.
Inclination
Pluto's orbit is inclined 17.1 degrees to the plane through which Earth goes around the Sun.
Pluto Data
Diameter: 1,430 miles (2,300 km)
Time to rotate: 6.4 Earth days
Orbit: 248 Earth years
Mass: 0.2% of Earth's
Diameter: 18% of Earth's
Distance from Sun: 39.5 times as far as Earth, on average
Pluto, left, and its satellite Charon, as seen by the Hubble telescope.
Pluto was Hades,
Roman god of the underworld.
Pluto and Charon complete an orbit every 6.4 Earth days. Each also spins on its own axis in exactly that same amount of time.
Scientists don't know how Pluto and Charon, which appear compositionally very different, came to be gravitationally bound. Like Earth's Moon, Charon might have been carved viciously from its host planet by the impact of another large object. That's the leading theory, but it's also possible Charon was simply captured by Pluto.
Finally, astronomers speculate that the Pluto-Charon system might contain other satellites, smaller moons that either developed with the system or that are KBOs that were captured later. A search is set for this year to find any possible additional moons.
Up close
Because Pluto so resembles KBOs, and because it travels with them in space, New Horizons will study both. In fact some scientists have suggested that examining the Kuiper Belt in general is the greater reason for going. Yet while the study of KBOs excites scientists, it is the close-up views of Pluto that are most likely to enthrall the public.
Here's how the heart of the mission will proceed:
About a year before the encounter, in 2014, New Horizons will start snapping pictures of Pluto and Charon, which will appear only as bright dots. About three months before encounter, the craft's cameras will generate the first useful maps of Pluto.
If Pluto's atmosphere is indeed freezing out (there are actually inexplicable signs of global warming right now), the craft will have an opportunity to watch seasonal change during these months of approach. Scientists speculate that all the stuff wafting above Pluto -- mostly nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and some water ice -- might fall out as snow as the protracted winter sets in.
Pluto may have the most dramatic seasonal patterns of any planet, Stern has said.
Finally, New Horizons will fly within 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers) of Pluto in 2015. The busiest part of the mission, officials say, will be a 24-hour period centered around this close approach. The craft will look for ultraviolet emissions from Pluto's atmosphere. It will generate high-resolution global maps of both Pluto and Charon. And it will analyze the surface composition and temperature.
For about a half-hour at closest approach, the probe will make visible and near-infrared pictures of Pluto, resolving surface features down to 200 feet (60 meters). It will do the same with Charon at a different point in the flyby.
Some of the best science is likely to be done just after the close approach, however, when the robot will look over its shoulder at the dark side of Pluto in an effort to spot atmospheric haze and search for possible rings. Silhouette views, provided as the craft actually passes through the shadows of Pluto and Charon, should help researchers learn how rough or smooth the two worlds are.
Once the flyby is complete, a whole other phase of the mission begins. This phase is not yet fully planned. The target will be a KBO, one that astronomers still have to find. Mission planners expect to fly past a KBO that's roughly 30-60 miles wide (50-100 kilometers). New Horizons will perform similar examinations of the rock to those that had been done at Pluto.
Stern expects much to be learned about Pluto and the Kuiper Belt between now and 2015, and the new information will be used to maximize the science return of the mission.
The Kuiper Belt is full of leftovers from the formation of the Sun and solar system.
Stern has said the distant belt probably contained enough material when the solar system initially developed to have created another Neptune-sized planet. For some reason, most of that mass is gone. And the "10th planet" never formed, though it pops up routinely in computer simulations.
So what happened? Something must have disrupted the Kuiper Belt, way back more than 4 billion years ago, Stern figures. Perhaps the formation of Neptune caused a gravitational shift that tore the other fledgling planet apart. Or maybe several large planetary wannabes were ejected out of the solar system by Neptune and, along the way, swept parts of the Kuiper Belt clean. Possibly something else is to blame.
Studying the Pluto-Charon system, as well as one or more other KBOs, could answer this question of the "missing" planet.
First, a big boost
The path to Pluto won't be direct. As with other spacecraft heading beyond Mars, a natural boost provided by the gravity of a planet will save fuel and cut mission costs.
The probe will first head to Jupiter, where early plans call for some investigation of the Jovian moons. Otherwise, New Horizons will slumber during much of its journey. Arriving at Jupiter more than a year after launch, the craft will zip around the giant planet and steal a little of its orbital energy, using it like a slingshot to set a new and faster course toward Pluto.
Under the direction of the Southwest Research Institute, serious design of the craft begins now that funding has been committed. The robotic probe will be put together, beginning next summer, by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Some of the instrumentation will be built by Ball Aerospace, Stanford University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
New Horizons will carry four instrument packages. The probe will see light emitted in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. A radio detector will probe Pluto's atmosphere and surface temperatures. Particle detectors will aim to sample material escaping the atmosphere into space.
The spacecraft will feature an 8-foot (2.5-meter) dish antenna, needed to communicate with Earth from as far away as 4.7 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers).
No mission is without bumps, but the upcoming trip to Pluto may well be smoother than the path traveled so far.
The public's mission
During the 1990s, NASA considered various types of spacecraft, from the very large to very small, for a Pluto mission. Cost estimates soared, and a proposed Pluto-Kuiper Express mission was cancelled in the fall of 2000. Reaction from scientists and even school children compelled NASA to reconsider, and the agency put out a request for proposals that could stay under a $500 million cap.
New Horizons, proposed by Stern and his colleagues, was chosen in late 2001. But as recently as late last year, NASA and even President Bush tried to keep the mission on the shelf. Scientists and the public continued to fight for the mission, in part because they feared an opportunity would be lost once Pluto entered the deep freeze.
Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, which has lobbied heavily for the New Horizons mission, was thrilled when he learned yesterday of the funding decision.
Friedman noted the quiet approval of the New Horizons budget (SPACE.com was first to report the approval, late Tuesday, five days after it had occurred). Friedman supposes the governmental downplay resulted from the event being politically lost in larger space issues of the moment, from the shuttle Columbia disaster to NASA's 2004 budget request, which was released earlier this month and calls for ambitious spending on nuclear propulsion initiatives that will culminate in a new mission to Jupiter's moons late in the decade.
"Maybe it is a minor story," Friedman said of the New Horizons approval, "but it's a major victory that we've fought long and hard for."
Congress is responsible for writing the mission into NASA's 2003 budget. Bush signed the legislation on Feb. 20. It guarantees an initial $110 million for the project in 2003. Additional funding is already in NASA's 2004 budget request.
The Planetary Society had lobbied hard for the mission, gathering thousands of signatures from the public to send to Congress.
"People really wanted this mission," Friedman said in a telephone interview, adding that Pluto strikes an uncommon chord in peoples' imaginations. "The fact that the public willed a mission into existence is great."
Stern, for his part, never figured to play such a prominent role in the exploration of the outer solar system. "I never intended in 1989 to have it turn out this way," said the New Horizon's team leader. "I figured we'd sell the mission in a few years, launch about 1996-2001, and I'd play some modest role," possibly as the principal investigator for one of the craft's many instruments.
Instead, Stern is poised to be the public face of the first mission to Pluto, the peoples' choice. Yet he credits the teamwork of the planetary community for getting New Horizons positioned for liftoff.
"This is not my mission," he said. "It's something many, many hundreds of people at NASA, APL, SwRI, Ball Aerospace, the Department of Energy, and in the science community are involved in. Many dozens of folks in the science community and NASA have worked 10 years or more to get it on the books and under way."
Will the long road to Pluto, a popular planet with both children and scientists and the only one never visited by a spacecraft, be worth the quarter-century wait?
"Past experience in planet exploration has consistently proved the value of reconnaissance missions for revolutionizing our view," Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, told SPACE.com. "Yes it'll be worth the wait, and then some."
Stern calls New Horizons "the first exploration of the third zone of the solar system," the region beyond both the terrestrial planets and the giant planets.
Deep freeze
As the mission heads toward launch in 2006, Pluto is headed for a deep freeze, moving farther from the Sun each day on its 248-year, elliptical orbit. So Stern and his colleagues at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are now in a race against time to design and build a craft, launch it, and gather precious data and pictures before the planet's atmosphere freezes out for two centuries.
New Horizons is set to arrive in 2015.
Since 1989, Pluto has been moving away from the Sun. In 1999, it crossed the orbital path of Neptune, repeating an age-old exchange that once again made Pluto the most distant planet in our solar system. One average, Pluto is 39.5 times farther from the Sun than is Earth.
It is a world upon which little solar energy lands and about which even less is known.
No telescope or spacecraft has ever snapped a good picture of Pluto. Even the venerable Hubble Space Telescope sees no more than a blur. Pluto's atmosphere is therefore an enigma, its surface only vaguely understood. Astronomers don't know how or even under what circumstances Pluto formed.
As planets go, Pluto is small and strange. As icy rocks go, however, Pluto appears to be large but otherwise common in a region of space littered with them.
Planet or just a rock?
The inner solar system contains four rocky, so-called terrestrial planets, Mars being the outermost. Pluto, a world of rock and ice, resides at the edge of a region of the solar system noted for giant planets made not of rock but of gas or ice. More specifically, Pluto roams a region riddled with thousands of rocky, icy objects that resemble both asteroids and comets.
These Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs, as they are called, were first suggested to exist by Gerard Kuiper about five decades ago. The first KBO was discovered in 1992. They are now known to populate a vast swath of space beyond the orbit of Neptune. There may be 100,000 of them bigger than 62-miles (100 kilometers) across, researchers say.
Stern calls the Kuiper Belt the big brother to the Asteroid Belt, which is positioned between Mars and Jupiter.
Pluto, found by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, would have been classified as a KBO instead of a planet were it discovered today, most astronomers agree. Here are some of the supporting reasons:
Pluto's orbit is not at all circular. Its distance from the Sun, called orbital eccentricity, varies by 25 percent. The 1,430-mile-wide (2,300-kilometer) rocky world also zooms high above and below the plane along which Earth and the other planets orbit. Astronomers refer to this as orbital inclination, and Pluto's is a whopping 17.1 degrees.
The oddities don't stop there. Pluto is the only planet whose moon is big enough -- Charon is roughly half the size of Pluto -- to draw the planet into a visibly significant binary orbit: The two objects orbit around a midpoint that is in the space between them. Some scientists refer to this as a double-planet system.
The Odd Planet Out
Eccentricity
Pluto's distance from the Sun varies by 25 percent. In 1999, Pluto crossed the orbital path of Neptune to become, once again, the most distant planet in the solar system.
Inclination
Pluto's orbit is inclined 17.1 degrees to the plane through which Earth goes around the Sun.
Pluto Data
Diameter: 1,430 miles (2,300 km)
Time to rotate: 6.4 Earth days
Orbit: 248 Earth years
Mass: 0.2% of Earth's
Diameter: 18% of Earth's
Distance from Sun: 39.5 times as far as Earth, on average
Pluto, left, and its satellite Charon, as seen by the Hubble telescope.
Pluto was Hades,
Roman god of the underworld.
Pluto and Charon complete an orbit every 6.4 Earth days. Each also spins on its own axis in exactly that same amount of time.
Scientists don't know how Pluto and Charon, which appear compositionally very different, came to be gravitationally bound. Like Earth's Moon, Charon might have been carved viciously from its host planet by the impact of another large object. That's the leading theory, but it's also possible Charon was simply captured by Pluto.
Finally, astronomers speculate that the Pluto-Charon system might contain other satellites, smaller moons that either developed with the system or that are KBOs that were captured later. A search is set for this year to find any possible additional moons.
Up close
Because Pluto so resembles KBOs, and because it travels with them in space, New Horizons will study both. In fact some scientists have suggested that examining the Kuiper Belt in general is the greater reason for going. Yet while the study of KBOs excites scientists, it is the close-up views of Pluto that are most likely to enthrall the public.
Here's how the heart of the mission will proceed:
About a year before the encounter, in 2014, New Horizons will start snapping pictures of Pluto and Charon, which will appear only as bright dots. About three months before encounter, the craft's cameras will generate the first useful maps of Pluto.
If Pluto's atmosphere is indeed freezing out (there are actually inexplicable signs of global warming right now), the craft will have an opportunity to watch seasonal change during these months of approach. Scientists speculate that all the stuff wafting above Pluto -- mostly nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and some water ice -- might fall out as snow as the protracted winter sets in.
Pluto may have the most dramatic seasonal patterns of any planet, Stern has said.
Finally, New Horizons will fly within 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers) of Pluto in 2015. The busiest part of the mission, officials say, will be a 24-hour period centered around this close approach. The craft will look for ultraviolet emissions from Pluto's atmosphere. It will generate high-resolution global maps of both Pluto and Charon. And it will analyze the surface composition and temperature.
For about a half-hour at closest approach, the probe will make visible and near-infrared pictures of Pluto, resolving surface features down to 200 feet (60 meters). It will do the same with Charon at a different point in the flyby.
Some of the best science is likely to be done just after the close approach, however, when the robot will look over its shoulder at the dark side of Pluto in an effort to spot atmospheric haze and search for possible rings. Silhouette views, provided as the craft actually passes through the shadows of Pluto and Charon, should help researchers learn how rough or smooth the two worlds are.
Once the flyby is complete, a whole other phase of the mission begins. This phase is not yet fully planned. The target will be a KBO, one that astronomers still have to find. Mission planners expect to fly past a KBO that's roughly 30-60 miles wide (50-100 kilometers). New Horizons will perform similar examinations of the rock to those that had been done at Pluto.
Stern expects much to be learned about Pluto and the Kuiper Belt between now and 2015, and the new information will be used to maximize the science return of the mission.
The Kuiper Belt is full of leftovers from the formation of the Sun and solar system.
Stern has said the distant belt probably contained enough material when the solar system initially developed to have created another Neptune-sized planet. For some reason, most of that mass is gone. And the "10th planet" never formed, though it pops up routinely in computer simulations.
So what happened? Something must have disrupted the Kuiper Belt, way back more than 4 billion years ago, Stern figures. Perhaps the formation of Neptune caused a gravitational shift that tore the other fledgling planet apart. Or maybe several large planetary wannabes were ejected out of the solar system by Neptune and, along the way, swept parts of the Kuiper Belt clean. Possibly something else is to blame.
Studying the Pluto-Charon system, as well as one or more other KBOs, could answer this question of the "missing" planet.
First, a big boost
The path to Pluto won't be direct. As with other spacecraft heading beyond Mars, a natural boost provided by the gravity of a planet will save fuel and cut mission costs.
The probe will first head to Jupiter, where early plans call for some investigation of the Jovian moons. Otherwise, New Horizons will slumber during much of its journey. Arriving at Jupiter more than a year after launch, the craft will zip around the giant planet and steal a little of its orbital energy, using it like a slingshot to set a new and faster course toward Pluto.
Under the direction of the Southwest Research Institute, serious design of the craft begins now that funding has been committed. The robotic probe will be put together, beginning next summer, by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Some of the instrumentation will be built by Ball Aerospace, Stanford University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
New Horizons will carry four instrument packages. The probe will see light emitted in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. A radio detector will probe Pluto's atmosphere and surface temperatures. Particle detectors will aim to sample material escaping the atmosphere into space.
The spacecraft will feature an 8-foot (2.5-meter) dish antenna, needed to communicate with Earth from as far away as 4.7 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers).
No mission is without bumps, but the upcoming trip to Pluto may well be smoother than the path traveled so far.
The public's mission
During the 1990s, NASA considered various types of spacecraft, from the very large to very small, for a Pluto mission. Cost estimates soared, and a proposed Pluto-Kuiper Express mission was cancelled in the fall of 2000. Reaction from scientists and even school children compelled NASA to reconsider, and the agency put out a request for proposals that could stay under a $500 million cap.
New Horizons, proposed by Stern and his colleagues, was chosen in late 2001. But as recently as late last year, NASA and even President Bush tried to keep the mission on the shelf. Scientists and the public continued to fight for the mission, in part because they feared an opportunity would be lost once Pluto entered the deep freeze.
Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, which has lobbied heavily for the New Horizons mission, was thrilled when he learned yesterday of the funding decision.
Friedman noted the quiet approval of the New Horizons budget (SPACE.com was first to report the approval, late Tuesday, five days after it had occurred). Friedman supposes the governmental downplay resulted from the event being politically lost in larger space issues of the moment, from the shuttle Columbia disaster to NASA's 2004 budget request, which was released earlier this month and calls for ambitious spending on nuclear propulsion initiatives that will culminate in a new mission to Jupiter's moons late in the decade.
"Maybe it is a minor story," Friedman said of the New Horizons approval, "but it's a major victory that we've fought long and hard for."
Congress is responsible for writing the mission into NASA's 2003 budget. Bush signed the legislation on Feb. 20. It guarantees an initial $110 million for the project in 2003. Additional funding is already in NASA's 2004 budget request.
The Planetary Society had lobbied hard for the mission, gathering thousands of signatures from the public to send to Congress.
"People really wanted this mission," Friedman said in a telephone interview, adding that Pluto strikes an uncommon chord in peoples' imaginations. "The fact that the public willed a mission into existence is great."
Stern, for his part, never figured to play such a prominent role in the exploration of the outer solar system. "I never intended in 1989 to have it turn out this way," said the New Horizon's team leader. "I figured we'd sell the mission in a few years, launch about 1996-2001, and I'd play some modest role," possibly as the principal investigator for one of the craft's many instruments.
Instead, Stern is poised to be the public face of the first mission to Pluto, the peoples' choice. Yet he credits the teamwork of the planetary community for getting New Horizons positioned for liftoff.
"This is not my mission," he said. "It's something many, many hundreds of people at NASA, APL, SwRI, Ball Aerospace, the Department of Energy, and in the science community are involved in. Many dozens of folks in the science community and NASA have worked 10 years or more to get it on the books and under way."
