Clyde Tombaugh Just Passed Pluto
How New Horizons shot through the Pluto System this past Tuesday morning. Its data gathering stage lasted several hours then it switched into transmission mode and "phoned home." I think maintaining a wellspring of wonder (sense of wonder) is important and fundamental to human experience. It enriches and inspires and fascinates in ways that lightens the weight of daily life. For me, space exploration has been a lifelong source of wonder. I have just witnessed a new probe serving as part of humanity's furthest reach from Earth. I feel part of this wow Now event. In 2006 we shot New Horizons into space. It burned a lot of its fuel speeding up to a record 36,000 miles per hour , carrying the probe away from Earth on a trajectory toward Jupiter. Whereas it took the Apollo mission astronauts three days to get to the Moon, New Horizons made the trek in just nine hours and kept going. In 2007 we used Jupiter's gravitational force to burn a bit more fuel, slings