Today, NASA made history by becoming the only space agency to explore all of the bodies in classic Solar System. Decades in the making, the NASA-led New Horizons mission completed its historic flyby of Pluto and its five moons at 7:49 am EDT. After traveling 9.5 years and over three billion miles, New Horizons was busy snapping pictures and collecting as much data as it could while it soared between the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon.
The spacecraft whizzed by 72 seconds ahead of schedule and at a distance of only 12,500 kilometers from the dwarf planet’s surface—70 kilometers closer than first predicted.
The atmosphere has been electric all day at here at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab. Shortly before the scheduled flyby time, there was a New Year’s Eve style countdown as the song “The Final Countdown” played in the background. Instead of a ball dropping, TV screens featured a digital countdown and when the timer hit zero, the room erupted in loud cheering, applause, and flag waving.
Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment