
Today we watched the Pluto flyby with New Horizons mission control via accurate-to-the-second visualizations and infographics. The results were glorious on the American Museum of Natural Historyâs IMAX screen.
The New Horizons spacecraft is moving very, very fast:

She is a beautyâcompact yet complex, with named parts:

What weâre looking at, via io9: New Horizons is equipped with seven different instruments, including three optical instruments, two plasma instruments, a dust sensor, and a radio science receiver/radiometer:
- LORRI: Long-range and high-resolution visible mapping
- SWAP: Solar wind
- PEPSSI: Energetic particle spectronomy
- Alice: Ultraviolet imaging spectroscopy
- Ralph: Visible mapping, infrared spectroscopic mapping
- SDC: Student-built dust counter
- Rex: Radio science and radiometry
Recent days have taught us much we did not know:

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Our continuing mission:

This stamp is now totally a collectorâs item and full of lies:

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Oh, you beautiful, shiny space beast:

Thatâs no moon!!!

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New Horizons is three billion miles from home and has taken 9 1/2 years to arrive. Getting her there is like âthreading a needle from New York to LAâ

Nitrogen, methane, carbon monoxide and more for everyone!

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At this point the scientists were getting verklempt: âThis is a post-human planetary encounter.â

There she is:

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You can download the âOpenSpaceâ software utilized here in its pre-alpha release in binary form:

Its purpose is to âdigitize the universe,â and in the future it will also be at work on space weather projects. Space weather. What a time to be alive.
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