After a long wait at 9, 5 years and 3 billion miles traveled, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft conducted the latest Pluto study in the most unexplored part of it in the solar system. Scientists hope that it has yielded results.
Confirmation that New Horizons was able to reach its destination - Pluto - and settle down next to its five known satellites, did not arrive until 8:53 pm Tuesday. However, this did not prevent the launch of a celebration at the New Horizons Mission Control Center at Johns Hopkins University of Applied Physics at the Baltimore laboratory.
“In truth, this is a major event in the history of mankind,” said John Mace Gransfeld, NASA's assistant administrator in science. "It was an incredible adventure."
As soon as New Horizons approached Pluto, scientists began to realize that they had discovered a more active and developed world than they had expected. The probe transferred the nearest image of the planet to the research center on Monday before the start of its next flight, and on Tuesday NASA published this photo online. “What we were able to see on Pluto is a complex, interesting and previously unexplored world,” Gransfeld told reporters after the study.
With a probability of 99%, it can be assumed that most of the data obtained is still on the New Horizons spacecraft, but soon they will be transmitted, so scientists can only wait.
“The ship was able to get through, at least we hope so,” said Alan Stern, the principal scientist at the research institute in Boulder, southwest, Colorado.
New Horizons at 7:49 am was a distance of 7,750 miles to Pluto. Alice Bowman, the manager of the passing mission, said that, according to the latest data, the meeting of the apparatus and the planet will occur 72 seconds earlier than planned.
