New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto - BBC News

"We have completed the initial reconnaissance of the Solar System, an endeavour started under President Kennedy more than 50 years ago and continuing to today under President Obama.  It's really historic what the US has done, and the New Horizons team is really proud to have been able to run that anchor leg and make this accomplishment."
~(Alan Stern:  Mission's Chief Scientist)~



"This is true exploration... that view is just the first of many rewards the team will get. Pluto is an extraordinarily complex and interesting world."

~(John Grunsfeld:  Nasa's Science Chief)~

"But there is a little bit of drama."

~(Alan Stern:  Mission's Chief Scientist)~

New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto - BBC News: Earlier, the space agency released the most detailed picture yet as it hurtled towards the dwarf planet on Tuesday.

New Horizons' flyby of 2,370km-wide Pluto is a key moment in the history of space exploration.

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.

"We have completed the initial reconnaissance of the Solar System, an endeavour started under President Kennedy more than 50 years ago and continuing to today under President Obama," said the mission's chief scientist, Alan Stern.

"It's really historic what the US has done, and the New Horizons team is really proud to have been able to run that anchor leg and make this accomplishment."

Talking about the latest image of Pluto that was returned just before the flyby, Nasa's science chief, John Grunsfeld, said: "This is true exploration... that view is just the first of many rewards the team will get. Pluto is an extraordinarily complex and interesting world."

"This is clearly a world where geology and atmosphere - climatology - play a role. Pluto has strong atmospheric cycles. It snows on the surface. These snows sublimate - (and) go back into the atmosphere - every 248-year orbit."

The probe is investigating not only Pluto but also its five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

Most moving for me has been catching a few words with the son of the man who first found Pluto. 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.

I asked Al if his father would have wanted to visit the tiny world. Maybe, he said, but he was always worried about the physical strain of life as an astronaut.

There is a very small possibility that New Horizons could be lost as it flies through the Pluto system.

Any stray icy debris would have been lethal if it had collided with the spacecraft at its 14km/s velocity (31,000mph).

"Hopefully it did [survive]," said Alan Stern, "but there is a little bit of drama."