New Horizons Has Phoned Home
New Horizons Phones Home Safe after Pluto Flyby
“The call everyone was waiting for is in. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft phoned home just before 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday to tell the mission team and the world it had accomplished the historic first-ever flyby of Pluto. “I know today we’ve inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “This is a historic win for science and for exploration. We’ve truly, once again raised the bar of human potential.”
"We have a healthy spacecraft, have recorded data, and are outbound from Pluto" #PlutoFlyby
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) July 15, 2015
#PlutoFlyby looks like the nerd state of the union coverage #NASA
— Miles O'Brien (@milesobrien) July 15, 2015
Congratulations and thank you to NASA, that’s a really big deal! The last of our solar system’s planets to be visited for the first time and NASA was the first to all of them. (I’m not interested in what those pesky Pluto demoters have to say.) Also first to visit a comet, first to visit an asteroid, and arguably was or will be first to visit the Sun. (Only came in second by a couple months getting an unmanned probe to the moon, thanks to a launch failure.) Finished 100 years after the founding of the agency.
An amazing record of exploration that will stand unique and unequaled for all time.
I believe Giotto was ESA not NASA
It was ESA. It was also the second flyby of a comet. ICE (formerly ISEE 3) was the first. It was a NASA mission.
Pluto has shown its face,
Before the whole human race.
From a dot to a globe,
News came from the probe.
Now Elon will want a new base.
Dude, you’re becoming like the Bard of Space!
(although it’s good we’ve no planet out there named Nantucket)
I seem to remember that when Mariner IV flew by Mars in July 1965, 50 years ago this month, it took 8 hours to transmit the data from one picture back to earth. This was due to transmission bit rate, not light speed travel time.
Now it takes a similar time, about 8 hours, to get a photo back from Pluto.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
NASA is going to get one heck of a roaming charge with the phone bill arrives. 😉
If this is what nerd-dom is about, sign me up. Repeatedly.
Bravo, bravissimo to the New Horizons team.