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The instruments are turned off until they are needed they cannot be used when the space craft is spinning which is required for it to transmit data to earth whi
by dogma1138 8y ago
The instruments are turned off until they are needed they cannot be used when the space craft is spinning which is required for it to transmit data to earth which is what it does most of the time the flyby lasts minutes at the most, the data takes over a year to transmit.
Also even if it didn’t need to be spun the instruments would be turned off to save power, the probe has no instruments that could detect any objects without a preplanned flyby.
- tabtab 8y agoI don't see how this is related to the above. It seems there's context confusion. I meant data processing (summarizing) of existing STORED data so that humans can review and decide on what to keep (fully download) and what to discard/delete so that there's enough storage for an upcoming new target. After passing a target, there's boatloads of data to send back. If a new target means there's not enough time to download it ALL before storage is needed for the new target, then decisions have to be made about what to fully send back and what to skip and/or only send summarized/compressed versions of. This has very little to do with instrument activation; it's a "between targets" process.