a16z Podcast

a16z Podcast: New Year, New Horizons — Pluto!

Frank Chen and Ivan Linscott

Posted January 1, 2017

What (on earth) does it take to get a signal to Pluto? Stanford senior scientist and astronomer Ivan Linscott, part of the team that ran the radio science experiment on the New Horizons probe, shares in conversation with a16z’s Frank Chen all the nitty gritty details about their project using Ruse radio transmissions to gather info about Pluto. Listen in on exactly what it really takes to do so — everything from commandeering old Cold War spy technology and plutonium to completing the entire mission on approximately 250 watts, and including other such highlights as a motorcycle riding, guitar playing, leather jacketed, tattooed FPGA fixer coming to fix everything when it seemed a lost cause, and the satellite going dark just moments before contact. With both deep tech specifics on radio occultation as well as all the drama of accomplishing such a difficult mission, this podcast is about how, exactly, we first sent a radio signal to Pluto.