NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter
Source: NASA
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto.
After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India - making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.
"I'm delighted at this latest accomplishment by NASA, another first that demonstrates once again how the United States leads the world in space," said John Holdren, assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple missions orbiting and exploring the surface of Mars in advance of human visits still to come; the remarkable Kepler mission to identify Earth-like planets around stars other than our own; and the DSCOVR satellite that soon will be beaming back images of the whole Earth in near real-time from a vantage point a million miles away. As New Horizons completes its flyby of Pluto and continues deeper into the Kuiper Belt, NASA's multifaceted journey of discovery continues."
"The exploration of Pluto and its moons by New Horizons represents the capstone event to 50 years of planetary exploration by NASA and the United States," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Once again we have achieved a historic first. The United States is the first nation to reach Pluto, and with this mission has completed the initial survey of our solar system, a remarkable accomplishment that no other nation can match."
Per the plan, the spacecraft currently is in data-gathering mode and not in contact with flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physical Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Scientists are waiting to find out whether New Horizons "phones home," transmitting to Earth a series of status updates that indicate the spacecraft survived the flyby and is in good health. The "call" is expected shortly after 9 p.m. tonight.
The Pluto story began only a generation ago when young Clyde Tombaugh was tasked to look for Planet X, theorized to exist beyond the orbit of Neptune. He discovered a faint point of light that we now see as a complex and fascinating world.
"Pluto was discovered just 85 years ago by a farmer's son from Kansas, inspired by a visionary from Boston, using a telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Today, science takes a great leap observing the Pluto system up close and flying into a new frontier that will help us better understand the origins of the solar system."
New Horizons' flyby of the dwarf planet and its five known moons is providing an up-close introduction to the solar system's Kuiper Belt, an outer region populated by icy objects ranging in size from boulders to dwarf planets. Kuiper Belt objects, such as Pluto, preserve evidence about the early formation of the solar system.
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, says the mission now is writing the textbook on Pluto.
"The New Horizons team is proud to have accomplished the first exploration of the Pluto system," Stern said. "This mission has inspired people across the world with the excitement of exploration and what humankind can achieve."
New Horizons' almost 10-year, three-billion-mile journey to closest approach at Pluto took about one minute less than predicted when the craft was launched in January 2006. The spacecraft threaded the needle through a 36-by-57 mile (60 by 90 kilometers) window in space -- the equivalent of a commercial airliner arriving no more off target than the width of a tennis ball.
Because New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched - hurtling through the Pluto system at more than 30,000 mph, a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice could incapacitate the spacecraft. Once it reestablishes contact Tuesday night, it will take 16 months for New Horizons to send its cache of data - 10 years' worth -- back to Earth.
New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple rovers exploring the surface of Mars, the Cassini spacecraft that has revolutionized our understanding of Saturn and the Hubble Space Telescope, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. All of this scientific research and discovery is helping to inform the agency's plan to send American astronauts to Mars in the 2030's.
"After nearly 15 years of planning, building, and flying the New Horizons spacecraft across the solar system, we've reached our goal," said project manager Glen Fountain at APL "The bounty of what we've collected is about to unfold."
APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Follow the New Horizons mission on Twitter and use the hashtag #PlutoFlyby to join the conversation. Live updates also will be available on the mission Facebook page.
For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
Read more: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=49503&linkId=15514645
Pluto image sent to Earth on July 14, 2015
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...the audience wouldn't cooperate (hah, hah, hah). (One of their "presenters" tried to rev up a "USA! USA!" chant, and nobody picked it up.)
They started with critically important press conference with an irrelevant congrats message from Stephen Hawking. (If New Horizons doesn't phone home, does Hawking take it back?) Mood in some palatial room that Hawking is inhabiting. Mood. Then a very emotional SONG, with old vid and animation! This just sucks.
Flags will be next.
NASA was much better at PR when the PR was run by engineers, who stuck to THE FACTS, and whose eruptions of enthusiasm were RARE and GENUINE.
This is too...packaged?
The actual "phone home" was exciting because I think it was real--the actual telemetry reports to Operations Manager Alice Bowman ("Mom"
, station by station, reporting "nominal," I guessed meaning okay.
How much better would it have been if the "presenters" (Mike Buckley, Duane Brown) had explained each of these reporting stations, which were mostly identified by acronym as it happened! I mostly couldn't tell which systems were reporting. And if the "presenters" should have explained what "nominal" was going to mean (at first I thought it meant "minimal," i.e., minimal power, minimal propulsion, etc.). "Nominal" actually meant "optimal" (a guess, or at least okay). Why didn't they explain this ahead of time, instead of all this emotional garbage?
I don't want to downplay the brilliance and persistence of this amazing science team. I am flabbergasted by what they've been able to do, and I think it's very, VERY important work. But at the crucial media moments, some evil corporate mind has taken over--an evil mind that tries to lure you with emotional music to buy shit you don't need or worse, is really bad for you--and then it adds U.S. flags in the ultimate hypocrisy.
We see this sickly combo--emotionalism and flag-waving--on TV commercials all the time, and hear it on the radio.
It. Is. Not. Science. It is the opposite of wonder.
Yup, out came the flags--not in the stupid proliferation of early this morning, with everybody in the control room wiggling a little flag. Just a couple of important people had the flags.
The "presenters" are "feel good" guys, who want to know how it FEELS. How does it FEEL?, they ask, over and over again, of different scientists. How did that feel? What are you feeling now?
The accomplishment is momentous. The P.R. sucks.
The U.S. flag again. OMG.
WHY DIDN'T THEY HAVE THE WORLD FLAG, MADE FROM THE APOLLO MISSION CAMERA LOOKING BACK AT EARTH?
Or at least both flags--us and all humanity. NASA's chief Charlie Bolden mentioned all those other humans but his flag-waving and all the flag waving is really small-minded, in such ironic contrast to the mission itself.
at one time we had a chance to be there in several days using an atomic powered spacecraft called orion. this is grand . understand there will be a broadcast of the pics on tv @ 8:00 pm pdt on one of the networks. 