Discovering New Horizons NEARLY TEN YEARS AGO, planetary scientist William McKinnon, PhD, and a team of scientists launched a spacecraft on a 3-billion-mile journey to explore the limits of our solar system. Here, he provides an inside look at New Horizons’ spectacular flyby of Pluto and its first discoveries coming into focus.
IMAGE: Artist conception of New Horizons encountering Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, created prior to the flyby (Courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Southwest Research Institute [NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI])
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n July 4, 2015, at 1:54 p.m. EDT, the New Horizons spacecraft suddenly fell silent. It was a heart-stopping moment. The spacecraft, having spent more than nine years barreling through space, was only 10 days out from its flyby of the Pluto system. New Horizons was carrying seven scientific instruments; a pinch of the ashes of Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh; a CD with the names of 430,000 Pluto fans — and the hopes
BY DIANA LUTZ
and dreams of 35 scientists who had been waiting nearly half a lifetime to lay eyes on the ninth planet in the classical solar system. Since plans for the mission had been originally made in 1989, planetary scientist William McKinnon, PhD, had married and raised three children, the youngest of whom is now a senior in high school, and bought and sold more than one home. Planetary scientists, commentators pointed out, are people who will work for delayed — very delayed — gratification.
WASHINGTON MAGAZINE
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