New Horizons under way

[bjarvis]

I was hugely relieved to hear that New Horizons, the Pluto fast fly-by probe, was successfully launched yesterday.

I've been fascinated by photos returned by planetary probes since I was old enough to read about the early probes to Mars & Venus. I was too young to understand the importance of Pioneer 10 & 11, but was utterly absorbed by the Voyager 1 & 2 photos of Jupiter & Saturn, then the later images of Uranus & Neptune. With dwindling resources for planetary missions and huge gobs of money being sucked up by the shuttle program, I always wondered if we'd manage to get photos of Pluto in my lifetime. While we still may not get there soon enough to see an atmosphere, unless there's a disaster we should see something.

Not having the plutonium generator blow up on the launch pad or upper atmosphere was a nice thing too. That whole Cosmos 954 thing 20+ years ago was a little too close to home.

Comments

[rsc.livejournal.com]

It's especially nice because I read somewhere that if they had had to wait until late in the launch window, they wouldn't have been able to use Jupiter, and the time-to-Pluto would have increased to 14 years.

I also think it's neat that a rocket headed to Pluto is powered by plutonium.

[ubel-josh.livejournal.com]

...and Pluto little Pluto is the farthest planet from the sun....

[allanh.livejournal.com]

It took me a couple of reads to figure out that you weren't making fun of the national franchised chain of technical training centers ("New Horizons Training"). You know .. training. Probes. Uranus.

I really need to get out more.

http://www.newhorizons.com/

[urbear]

Even more cool... the probe is carrying some of the remains of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930 after a 10-month search. See this for more.