The Pluto Fly By Is Done – So What’s Next?
The Pluto fly by today was fabulous, and it will take about 16 months for all the data New Horizons took to actually make it back to Earth for analysis.
I had no idea it would take that long, but thinking about that, 3.65 billion miles is a long way for a signal to travel. The space craft is also still traveling about 30,000 miles an hour out beyond Pluto now, so the further it travels, the longer it will take to get the data back.
Let’s hope no space debris hits the craft before we can get the photos and data it did capture back to Earth. NASA is also hoping New Horizons can find another dwarf planet or other interesting object way out in the distant solar system and send that info back as well …
The second video is from CNN and gives a nice overview of the discovery of Pluto and where New Horizons is headed now … all in just under a minute.
Well worth the minute it takes to watch …