Happy Pluto Day!

After over nine years and five months, New Horizons space probe finally made it to Pluto today.

After a few aborted missions – most notable the Pluto-Kuiper Express – New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006 with the express purpose of exploring the one last planet in our solar system that had not yet been explored.

Of course, later that year, the International Astronomical Union redefined the word “planet” to purposely exclude Pluto from the official roster of nine. Pluto is still a planet…it’s just a dwarf planet now. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting.

For many years, this was the best picture we had of Pluto.

Here’s the best picture we had as of last month.

Here’s the best picture we have of Pluto as of a few days ago.

Through the nine-plus years of New Horizons’ journey, I’ve been tracking it’s progress. I’ve frequently visited NASA’s New Horizons page to see how long the journey has been, how far it has traveled, and how much longer until its closest approach to Pluto. Of course, I had a personal interest in the probe, since my name is on it (it’s true – type in my name here and you’ll see I’m listed).

By the time New Horizons had been traveling for a thousand days, Owen was also interested in the progress, and we tracked it on a wooden board we made together – every few months, he’d gently nudge the little probe-on-a-sting another half inch or so toward its destination.

Here’s Owen as a mere 6 yr. old demonstrating the probe’s progress.

And here he is just a few months ago, showing that now his model probe is practically right on top of Pluto.

This morning, I walked into Owen’s room and woke him up. He looked at me and said, “What?” and, without saying a word, I held up my laptop and showed him NASA’s countdown to the closest encounter – it read just over 5 minutes. “Oh, cool,” he said, and I gestured for him to move over and I sat on his bed next to him. We watched as the counter ran down to zero, then clicked over to watch a live newsfeed at NASA that included interviews with some of the leading astronomers in charge of the project. I then told Owen that New Horizons is so far away that, even traveling at the speed of light, the pictures it is taking right this moment won’t be seen by anyone for over 14 hours. I told him I had to go to work, but we’d check on it again tonight.

I wore my Pluto t-shirt to work today. Even though it’s 9 years old and very ratty. Who cares? Today is a special day.

Last night, Owen, Isla, and I tried to take a picture of ourselves at Pluto Time , but I didn’t think we did it right. Owen was upset, but I consoled him by telling him that today is the special day to do it, since today is the day of the closest encounter. Isla pat Owen on the back and said, “It’s okay Owen, tomorrow is Pluto Day.” But actually, we got a pretty decent photo…