Pluto! in Holy Shit!

  • July 14, 2015, 4:02 p.m.
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Does anyone else find this as FASCINATING as I do?

I’ve been following the Q&A session on the NASA Facebook page, just learning as much as I can about this historic few days. The scientists themselves obviously have a lot of questions. One person asked, “What is the most important information you wish to find out from this mission?”
One scientist answered that the answer to that question would differ from scientist to scientist, but his personal mission is to find out the correlation between Pluto’s atmosphere and it’s surface, as he believes because of it’s freezing temperatures, solids possibly become gases as they enter the atmosphere. At least that’s what I’m making of it.

I have so many questions myself, even wondering HOW this spacecraft made that gigantic journey to arrive at Pluto with no damages!
Like, this thing was travelling at 30,000 miles (48,200 kilometres) per hour!
The journey took 9.5 years to arrive at Pluto.

My main question is how did it not collide with something, going at that speed, for that long, with all that space junk? Like an asteroid? Space junk? Anything? I thought space was full of this stuff floating around up there.

I could be wrong. I do know I find space absolutely fascinating. Probably the most fascinating thing about life itself. To me, obviously it does hold the answer to how this planet we all live on came to be, and the scientists manning ‘New Horizons’ believe that Pluto is the planet in-between planet formation and creation.

It will take a year for all data to transfer back to Earth.

I assume ‘New Horizons’ is continuing on it’s journey past Pluto to see what else there is at the edge of our solar system? Not completely clear on what it’s mission is from here on.

This just seems completely surreal to me!


Herzog July 14, 2015

Space junk's a problem for craft orbiting Earth (the Int Space Station has to dodge debris occasionally), but asteroids are very thinly spread out and the chances of hitting one are remote.

cazoob July 14, 2015

Pretty amazing. I remember hearing the other day that they briefly lost communications with it. After 9 years, to lose contact right before the end game, you'd want to die lol.

Crystal Apple July 17, 2015

It's bloody fascinating!!! Especially given all the debate of Pluto's planet/non planet status. I find it so weird that I teach kids about the 8 plants now :/

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