A trip nine years in the making. After traveling nearly three billion miles, NASA’s New Horizons space craft has made its last planetary stop in Pluto!
The space craft was 7800 miles from the dwarf planet at 7:49 am ET, when the photos of Pluto were taken. NASA still wants photos of its surrounding moons, which may take up to an additional 13 hours. Alan Stern, New Horizon’s developer and manager, told the Associated Press that “It’s a moment of celebration…We’ve just done the anchor leg, we have completed the initial reconnaissance of the solar system, an endeavor started under President Kennedy more than 50 years ago.”
New Horizon departed Florida, on Jan. 19, 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The mission gained progress in February 2007 when the space craft stopped by Jupiter for scientific studies and a gravity boost in order to push forward towards Pluto. It took an additional eight years at 31,00 miles per hour to reach the dwarf planet for its five month reconnaissance flyby study. The historic event makes the United States the only nation to have travel to all planets in the solar system.
At Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, the New Horizon team and family members joined together to watch the signal return to Earth from Pluto. The children of Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, were also in attendance. Once the spacecraft’s signal finally reached Earth, the crew couldn’t help but break into celebration.
While this voyage has been an event to write in the history books, NASA will now have to wait until the spacecraft “phones home” next. NASA will not know if the mission was a success until New Horizon sends a “success signal” and begins transmitting data once the study is complete in October 2016.
Check out this video of events that lead to NASA’s flyby study of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt:
