After a three-billion-mile, decade-long journey, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reached Pluto on Tuesday, “the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.”
Moving at over 30,000 miles per hour, the probe made good on time, "about one minute less than predicted" when launched back in 2006.
NASA reports,
“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.”
This historic triumph makes the U.S. the first nation to reach the dwarf planet. The New Horizons mission team is now writing the textbook on Pluto and its five known moons.
Image via NASA of the final approach
"The New Horizons team is proud to have accomplished the first exploration of the Pluto system,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said.
“This mission has inspired people across the world with the excitement of exploration and what humankind can achieve," said Stern.
Images via NASA of the New Horizons team reacting to the latest, sharpest image of Pluto
John Holdren, assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said that the successful Pluto flyby "demonstrates once again" that the U.S. "leads the world in space":
Image via NASA of team members and guests counting down the craft's approach
“I’m delighted at this latest accomplishment by NASA, another first that demonstrates once again how the United States leads the world in space."
“New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA," he said, "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.”
Image via NASA depicting measurements of Pluto and Charon as compared to planet Earth
In approximately 16 months, the New Horizons probe will send its cache of data back to Earth, full of insights and photographs that would positively open the door to new discoveries.
"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.
"The bounty of what we've collected is about to unfold."
Next on the agenda: Sending American astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.