A NASA spacecraft flew by Pluto, sending to scientists a message that it survived its historic encounter before sending back the closest look ever of the distant planet.
After a three-billion-mile journey, the nuclear-powered New Horizons -- about the size of a piano -- took pictures of Pluto. The photos will show details of Pluto never seen before in the history of space travel. The images are to be shown by the US space agency on Wednesday.
New Horizons is moving faster than any spacecraft ever built, at a speed of about 30,800 miles per hour. Some 13 hours after the flyby, applause broke out in mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Center outside the US capital Washington. "We have a healthy spacecraft," said mission operations manager Alice Bowman. The confirmation eased anxiety among scientists who were waiting all day to find out if the $700 million New Horizons survived the Kuiper Belt, the region beyond Neptune that Stern has described as a "shooting gallery" of cosmic debris. NASA had said there was a one in 10,000 chance that the spacecraft could be lost, and all it would take would be "a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice".
"It is truly amazing that humankind can go out and explore these worlds. And to see Pluto be revealed just before our eyes -- it is just fantastic," Bowman said. Obama cheered the mission on Twitter. "Pluto just had its first visitor! Thanks @NASA - it's a great day for discovery and American leadership," the US president wrote.
The spacecraft launched in 2006. New Horizons is the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto and its seven scientific instruments aim to explore details of the surface, geology and atmosphere of Pluto and its five moons.
Already, scientists have learned from New Horizons that Pluto is 12-18 miles larger than previously thought, with a radius of 736 miles. Scientists have also confirmed the existence of a polar ice cap on Pluto and found nitrogen escaping from Pluto’s atmosphere.
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