New Horizons under way
Jan. 20th, 2006 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisI 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.
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.
