New Horizons: History Made In Our Lifetime

Hello Steemians it's time for another of my posts which I sincerely hope brings a smile to your face. So here it goes... Over eleven years ago on January 19, 2006 a spacecraft the size of a grand piano travelled on top of a rocket & reached speeds in excess of 36,000 m/p/h.

The New Horizons is a probe with the task of touring and mapping our solar system by flying past Pluto and its moons. On board are 7 major scientific instruments and a generator fueled by decaying plutonium and a few other things. I.e. a container with the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. Two american flags, two U.S. quarters, a C.D. with the names of 434,000 people who signed up in 2005, a C.D. with pics of the New Horizons team, a piece of SpaceShipOne (the first privately owned space craft) and a U.S. stamp from 1991 that reads "Pluto not yet explored".

The New Horizons has been flying for over a decade. So to wrap your mind around this you must understand that Pluto is very, very, very far away. Depending on their location around the Sun the distances between Earth and Pluto vary from 4.67 to 2.66 BILLION miles apart from each other. Despite this immense distance NASA engineers have successfully navigated NEW Horizons towards its target and retrieved data in return via radio waves. It takes over 4hrs 30minutes from space craft to Earth to receive the data. A 200ft diameter satelite dish is needed which can only receive 1 kilobit per second (Basically 50 times slower than a 1990's modem).

The most important peices of information the New Horizons is taking are photos of Pluto because we don't have any good ones... until now. Watch photographic history being made. (There's no audio on either video so play your favorite song and watch!)

Becaust the New Horizons has run out of feul it is traveling around 31,000 m/p/h and can not slow down upon reaching Pluto so these images are taken as quickly as possible. After it passes Pluto it's going to keep on going and in 2019 it will fly near a small icy object on the edge of our solar system.

Bonus Video: New Horizons flying past Pluto's largest moon Charon

Here are some links of my posts that are similar:

https://steemit.com/science/@mithrilweed/finding-a-second-earth-is-not-a-matter-of-if-but-when

https://steemit.com/science/@mithrilweed/where-did-it-all-begin

I would love to be able to fly at least to Earth's moon and back but until then I'll just have to settle for what NASA gives me.

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