The journey to Pluto may have taken 9 years, but the longest wait came in the moments before receiving the all-clear signal from NASA鈥檚 New Horizons spacecraft.
Finally, bang on schedule at 8:52:37 PM EDT, New Horizons phoned home.
鈥淲e have a healthy spacecraft, we鈥檝e recorded data from the Pluto system, and we鈥檙e outbound for Pluto,鈥� mission operations manager Alice Bowman declared. 鈥淲e did it! It鈥檚 just great!鈥�
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The probe flew past Pluto at 7:49 AM EDT, but was so busy gathering data on the dwarf planet that it couldn鈥檛 communicate with mission control until this evening.
The team waited the four and a half hours it takes for a signal to travel the 4.8 billion kilometres from Pluto, and then a few moments more as NASA鈥檚 Deep Space Network locked in on the short data burst. Finally, they knew: the mission had played out perfectly.
The atmosphere was electric at mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Mission team members hugged, cheered, waved American flags, and cried tears of joy.
鈥淚 want to say to you just three words,鈥� said principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in a press conference immediately after receiving the signal. 鈥淲e did it.鈥�
The health check was entirely engineering data, says Stern 鈥� there was no science data, as planned. 鈥淎s soon as it was over, New Horizons went back to collecting that data.鈥�
鈥淭here鈥檚 a treasure trove of data waiting up there for us,鈥� Leslie Young of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado told New 杏吧原创. 鈥淎ll the best stuff.鈥�
Most of that trove won鈥檛 reach Earth until tomorrow. But earlier today, the team released a new false-colour image of Pluto and Charon, which highlights the contrasts and mysteries of the twin worlds (see above).
鈥淭his isn鈥檛 what the eye would see, but it鈥檚 not a cheat, it鈥檚 real colours,鈥� said project scientist .
鈥淭o think that the images we get tomorrow are going to be 10 times higher resolution,鈥� he added. 鈥淲e鈥檝e picked out some of the choicest observations.鈥� Only a few will be downloaded from the spacecraft over the next few days. The rest will take more than a year.
The team can鈥檛 wait. 鈥淚f you think it was big today, wait until tomorrow and the next day,鈥� said NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld. This is the start of the mission, not the end. 鈥淎s a team we have made history. This can never be repeated, this is in the history books.鈥�
For now, though, the team are ready to call it a day.
鈥淢OM [Mission Operations Manager], go home and get some sleep,鈥� Grunsfeld told Bowman. 鈥淓veryone get some sleep, because tomorrow it is going to get really exciting.鈥�
For the latest updates on New Horizons and all the breaking news from Pluto, follow our live blog.
