New Horizons flew past Pluto. Nine and a half years, three billion miles, and the probe threaded a keyhole in space within 72 seconds of a schedule written when I was in high school. The photos (Pluto has a heart-shaped plain, mountains of ice) arrived at 1-2 kbps, slower than dial-up, and will take over a year to fully download. The spacecraft has less computing power than my phone and less RAM than my Chrome tab about it. Constraints breed brilliance. I printed the heart photo for my desk.
Also this fortnight: USA won the World Cup. Carli Lloyd scored a hat trick in sixteen minutes, including a shot from midfield. Most-watched soccer match in US history. The group-chat omen was wrong for once.
And the Reddit saga concluded: CEO Ellen Pao resigned. The mob’s role in it left a bad taste even among people who wanted change. Communities can strike; communities can also be cruel. Both true; both now documented.
TIL: RTG power. Pluto’s too far for solar, so New Horizons runs on decaying plutonium. When your uptime requirement is “decades, unattended, in the void,” your power source is a physics constant. Ultimate SLA.