Ivan Linscott
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- a16z49 min
a16z Podcast | New Year, New Horizons -- Pluto!
Frank Chen and Ivan Linscott detailed the New Horizons Radio Experiment (REX), a mission that utilized plutonium-powered propulsion and custom FPGA signal processing to overcome extreme distance and radiation challenges while collaborating with the Southwest Research Institute and Johns Hopkins APL. The team overcame critical bottlenecks ranging from international plutonium acquisition to a last-minute software bug that threatened the Pluto encounter sequence, ultimately securing a 1,000,000:1 signal-to-noise ratio for the first bistatic radar measurement of a distant dwarf planet. Scientific results from the REX experiment included the unprecedented discovery of a warmer Pluto night side and the creation of the first complete temperature profile via radio occultation.