Pluto Meets New Horizons!

After nearly a decade, the wait is finally over. Pluto finally gets to meet New Horizons and the space craft is now of the farther side of the planet having successfully culminated its flypast. Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager confirmed that they have a healthy spacecraft, they have recorded data of the Pluto system, and they’re outbound from Pluto.

After nearly twenty hours of recording information New Horizons finally sent back confirmation of all systems normal to a packed auditorium where Bowman received them to much jubilation in the room. The sheer magnitude of data waiting to be sorted through will take nearly the next sixteen months to reach the planet. Needless to say with several eager scientists waiting to analyse it, just like waiting for the next episode of your daily soap opera.

Just the three huge greyscale pictures that arrive tomorrow will create a huge amount of buzz as they will allow us to see the surface of Pluto as never seen before. The researchers can expect temperature readings, solar wind measurements, nitrogen molecule counts, and whole lot of other variable recordings made by New Horizons. Needless to say that this is one science project that is going to have astronomers busy for decades.