New Horizons Project

Sunday, 22 April 2012

How to track New Horizons Spacecraft (that’s the probe that’s on it’s way to check out Pluto and Charon)…

First, I cut a piece of wood 648 centimeters long (that’s just over two feet, for you troglodytes). Then, about midway down on the short sides, I cut a groove so it looked like this:

Then, like a true Rolling Stone, Owen Painted it Black:

Next, he applied some “stars”:

Then we needed to calculate the relative distances of the outer planets. I decided we would begin with Saturn 6 millimeters in from the left. Turns out, this was too close to the edge, so we fudged a little by placing Saturn about 20mm in. From there, we calculated that Uranus needed to be placed 187 millimeters beyond Saturn, Neptune had to be 211 millimeters beyond that, and Pluto and Charon 182 millimeters beyond that.

The calculations were quite tedious – we had to measure the exact length of our board, then subtract how far in we wanted the planets, then look up the planets’ relative distances from one another, then translate the actual millions of miles into mere millimeters. I should point out that we were interested in the relative distance of the planets’ orbits, not the planets themselves.

Using our numbers, Owen measured the board and marked the locations of the planets’ orbits. We didn’t bother with the inner planets or Jupiter for two reasons: 1) Adding more orbits would force our diagram to “squish” even further and 2) the New Horizons probe is already in the outer solar system, so there’s nothing to track here in the “metro area” of the solar system.

Then, Owen used a white colored pencil (oxymoron?) to draw the orbits. For Saturn’s orbit, he used an upturned soup bowl. For Uranus’, he used an upturned mixing bowl. For Neptune’s (pictured below), he used our pizza stone. For Pluto and Charon’s orbit, I held a ruler and torqued it slightly while Owen drew along the curve.

Then Owen glued on little images of the planets. It sure would have been great if a store sold planet stickers. But I visited Target, Michael’s, BedBathBeyond, and Party City. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Either they don’t sell astronomy-themed stickers, or they just sell lame-ass planet stickers – Earth, something that looks like the moon, something that looks like Saturn, and then random colored circles that look like nothing in our solar system. Bottom line: grab images online, print them, cut them out, and tell your kid to glue them on.

We also printed out an image of the New Horizons probe. While Owen glued the planets on the board, I glued the probe onto a smaller, thinner piece of wood. The wood piece I used was a mini-blind sample my wife had ordered from blinds.com. She wasn’t crazy about us using her sample. Sorry, but the New Horizons Spacecraft isn’t going to track itself.

We then took the party outside, where Owen applied a coating of polyurethane. We left it outside to dry overnight, and the next day it rained felines and canines. Still, the project was salvagable.

Here’s another picture of Owen playing with a toxic chemical. About 90% of the polyurethane seen in this picture is currently covering my garage floor. Thanks, Isla.

After I botched the polyurethane step as much as possible, Owen used a spare shoelace and threaded it through two holes I drilled in the piece of wood the spacecraft is glued on:

Here’s the backside, after it’s been threaded:
I then tied a simple (very simple) knot to the left side of the shoe lace, and hooked it behind the groove on the large piece of wood, like this:

Then we headed over to the computer to find out the current position of New Horizons. NASA’s site dedicated to this mission IS FOUND HERE, and we clicked on the link that says “Where is the New Horizons Spacecraft Now? – Find Out More.”

Here we are at the computer:

Wow. You’re at your computer, looking at a picture of someone at their computer. Quite a headtrip, huh?

 According to NASA’s site, the spacecraft is 1,155 days from closest approach to Pluto – the solar system map indicates it has covered approximately 1/3 of the distance between Uranus and Neptune, so we positioned our “spacecraft” at that point on our model, and hooked the shoelace around the other groove so that it was taut.

If you plagiarize my idea, here are two things to keep in mind (besides not botching the lacquering):

1) make sure the holes that the shoelace hooks through on the spacecraft are large enough so that the spacecraft can slide freely (but not too freely) so that you can track the probe’s progess.

2) Don’t put the planets in the same line as the grooves. Here’s where I messed up. If you look at the image, above, you’ll see that Owen glued the planets really close to the center, which is exactly where the shoelace lies. This isn’t really a problem, but it would be nicer if the planets weren’t covered by the shoelace.

All done!
See you in 2015, Pluto!