{"id":10986,"date":"2015-07-15T01:05:52","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T05:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=10986"},"modified":"2015-07-15T01:45:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T05:45:47","slug":"new-horizons-probe-survives-the-fly-by-of-pluto-begins-long-download-of-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=10986","title":{"rendered":"New Horizons: Probe survives the fly-by of Pluto & begins long download of data"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Horizons<\/a> spacecraft re-established contact with ground stations after spending nearly a day focused only on the Plutonian systems.<\/p>\n

NASA’s New Horizons \u2018Phones Home\u2019 Safe after Pluto Flyby<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The call everyone was waiting for is in. NASA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know today we\u2019ve inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come,\u201d NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. \u201cThis is a historic win for science and for exploration. We\u2019ve truly, once again raised the bar of human potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>
New Horizons Flight Controllers celebrate after they received confirmation from the spacecraft that it had successfully completed the flyby of Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 in the Mission Operations Center (MOC) of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA\/Bill Ingalls)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The preprogrammed \u201cphone call\u201d — a 15-minute series of status messages beamed back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland through NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network —\u00a0ended a very suspenseful 21-hour waiting period. New Horizons had been instructed to spend the day gathering the maximum amount of data, and not communicating with Earth until it was beyond the Pluto system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the successful flyby of Pluto we are celebrating the capstone event in a golden age of planetary exploration,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.\u00a0\u201cWhile this historic event is still unfolding –with the most exciting Pluto science still ahead of us — a new era of solar system exploration is just beginning. \u00a0NASA missions will unravel the mysteries of Mars, Jupiter, Europa and worlds around other suns in the coming years.”<\/p>\n

Pluto is the first Kuiper Belt object visited by a mission from Earth. New Horizons will continue on its adventure deeper into the Kuiper Belt, where thousands of objects hold frozen clues as to how the solar system formed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing in the footsteps of planetary exploration missions such as Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager, New Horizons has triumphed at Pluto,\u201d says New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. \u201cThe New Horizons flyby completes the first era of planetary reconnaissance, a half century long endeavor that will forever be a legacy of our time.”<\/p>\n

New Horizons is collecting so much data it will take 16 months to send it all back to Earth.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOn behalf of everyone at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, I want to congratulate the New Horizons team for the dedication, skill, creativity, and determination they demonstrated to reach this historic milestone,\u201d said APL Director Ralph Semmel. \u201cWe are proud to be a part of a truly amazing team of scientists, engineers, and mission operations experts from across our nation who worked tirelessly to ensure the success of this mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the mission, science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA\u2019s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n

Follow the New Horizons mission on Twitter<\/a> and use the hashtag #PlutoFlyby to join the conversation. Live updates also will be available on the mission Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more information on the New Horizons mission, including fact sheets, schedules, video and images, visit:<\/p>\n