Pawan from Sharjah has a few interesting questions to ask.
The first question is: What type of communication systems have been set up in the spacecraft to send data back to Earth from such a long distance?
Well, the communication system communicates at what we refer to as X-band frequencies. That's about 8 gigahertz.
We have a 12-watt power amplifier onboard so that our radiated RF power is 12 watts.
Of course, we have that large dish antenna that you see in the pictures of the spacecraft, that's 6 1/2-feet across.
And that's all part of the communication system. The datarates we have vary
depending on our distance from Earth. They start out at about 104 kilobits per second.
At Pluto, it will be down to about 1 kilobit per second. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but you have to
realize that this is really a very hard thing we're doing and it's really quite an accomplishment to achieve what we have.