Yesterday, the New Horizons spacecraft started its 10 year journey to Pluto to begin its exploration of the last planet of the solar system. It's the fastest spacecraft ever built by NASA, travelling at about 47,000 miles per hour (75,600 kph), more than 10 times faster than a speeding bullet!!
It took Apollo 11 three days to reach the moon in 1969. New Horizons will fly by it about nine hours after launch and reach Jupiter in a little more than a year, the space agency said.New Horizons will capture the first up-close imagery of Pluto, its moons, and a region of the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy, rocky bodies that populate a part of the solar system beyond the planet Neptune, only detected in 1992. Scientists think such bodies are debris left over from the formation of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.
New Horizons also carries with its payload a CD with the names of hundreds of thousands of people who signed up on a website to have their name included on the CD.
I signed up last September. My name is currently travelling to the edges of the solar system.
2 comments:
10 years? Wow, that's a long time... Are you going to remember about this after such a long time?
Sure, I always follow this kind of things. And even if I forget about it for now, I'll remember when New Horizons gets there and gets more press coverage then a drag queen on acid in Times Square on New Year's Eve!!
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