Comments on: Comet Hunting Space Robot Spots Quarry

By: gruebait

gruebait — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:34:32 +0000

“I don’t know why they call it night.”

Maybe it will be night for the Stardust-NExT mission scientists?

From the Stardust site:
Closest Encounter with comet Tempel 1
8:40 PM PST Feb. 14, 2011

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:08:05 +0000

I actually balked at the term “downlinked” because I don’t like the term. It’s not linking, it’s transferring. It always seemed strange to me.

But yes, I should have said Uploaded, but uploaded makes no sense because the probe is UP there, so downloaded (i.e., downlinked) makes more sense.

Which is why all rivers flow south, and arctic high pressure systems drop down from Canada into the united states while tropical fronts rise up from the Gulf of Mexico.

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:35:13 +0000

Surely the probe uploaded, not downloaded? Although it did send it down to Earth…

The terms for the transmission links are “uplink” to the spacecraft and “downlink” to the Earth, because the spacecraft is up there and we’re down here. The terms historically refer to orbiting and suborbital spacecraft, and possibly to aircraft. So yes, it is the opposite of the usage for “upload” and “download”.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:17:55 +0000

Surely the probe uploaded, not downloaded? Although it did send it down to Earth… Hmm, maybe we should just go with “transmitted”.

And, it’s always night in space.

By: Charles Sullivan

Charles Sullivan — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Them’s just fuzzy squares.