“Hello, Pluto, we’ve made it here.” Its taken a while, but finally we have a real Pluto flyby. NASA’s New Horizons probe flew by Pluto this morning (July 14), capturing history’s first up-close looks at the little rock that couldn’t (Pluto was declared no planet a short while ago, but might make a comeback after today).
Later tonight we’ll know definitively if the mission was a success.
The closest approach came at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT), when the spacecraft zoomed within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto’s frozen surface. Will New Horizons survive the flyby? We’ll know tonight if it managed safely to pass through Pluto’s debris field without sustaining a hit.
The Mission that Almost Couldn’t
The $723 million New Horizons mission launched in January 2006 but the mission was proposed in 1989, the same year NASA’s Voyager 2 probe zoomed past Neptune, getting the first up-close looks at that stunning, blue “ice giant.”
It is questionable whether the mission could fly today because of the political clout of the out of control environmental movement, represented first of all by Barack Obama, arguably America’s first truly green president.
It took more than a decade of hard work and wrangling before New Horizons graduated from concept to full-fledged NASA mission. Forgotten in all the excitement of the flyby is the tortured history of New Horizons as environmentalists, rapidly gaining political clout, sought to block the mission at every turn.
