Signals from a spacecraft 3 billion miles away swept over Earth on Tuesday, confirming that NASA’s New Horizons probe survived its history-making Pluto flyby.
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NASA had said there was a one in 10,000 chance that the spacecraft could be lost, and all it would take would be “a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice”.
But perhaps more exciting are the unprecedented views of Pluto’s mysterious moons, Charon.
“We have a healthy spacecraft”, announced mission operations director Alice Bowman. The images were due to begin arriving around 9pm AEST.
The Pluto images everybody is waiting for will be revealed at 3pm ET on NASA TV. We are exploring the hinterlands of the solar system.
It marks the fact that all nine objects considered by many to be the Solar System’s planets – from Mercury through to Pluto – have now been visited at least once by a probe.
Scientists in charge of the $720 million mission hope the new observations will restore Pluto’s honor. This handsome image was captured by the spacecraft around 4:00 pm EDT on July 13, which was 16 hours before New Horizon’s closest approach to Pluto.
Yet for all the jubilation and flag-waving, the moment was artificial: That knowledge of the spacecraft’s position was theoretical. Al Tombaugh is obviously delighted that a sample of his father Clyde’s ashes is on board New Horizons, speeding past Pluto and now heading into the unexplored realm of the Kuiper Belt. President Barack Obama sent his best Tuesday night with a tweet: “Pluto just had its first visitor!”
Principal scientist Alan Stern promised even better images will start “raining” down on Earth beginning Wednesday. The picture featured the dwarf planet’s bright heart-shaped region as well as the head of a dark “whale” feature. “How about a round of applause for that attractive new planet“, he said. Nasa scientists are excited by Pluto’s contrasting levels of brightness, because that speaks to interesting geological and atmospheric processes taking place on the planet.
New Horizons is moving faster than any spacecraft ever built, at a speed of about 50 000 km/h. “It’s telling me that [Pluto’s] crust was not heated and modified to the extent that it was on Triton”. He also said it’s possible nitrogen and methane snow fall on Pluto.
By the time New Horizons runs out of gas, it could be 100 times further from Earth than our planet is from the Sunday.
But the early image was not yet detailed enough for the science team to offer more than speculation.
NASA has said that the New Horizons probe went as close to the second biggest dwarf planet in our solar system as just 12,500km.
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If you thought that your yellowing PSone was good for late-night sessions of Crash Bandicoot only, then you may want to have a rethink. “Stay tuned”, Stern keeps repeating. The implications for Pluto’s atmosphere will be investigated in the coming months. “This really is a planet”, he says.
