Probe Begins Epic 3 Billion-Mile Trek to Learn About Pluto; Is Carrying Ashes of Planet’s Discoverer
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – An unmanned NASA spacecraft hurtled toward Pluto on Thursday on a 3 billion-mile journey to the solar system’s last unexplored planet – a voyage that is expected to take 9 1/2 years.
The New Horizons spacecraft blasted off aboard an Atlas V rocket in a spectacular start to the $700 million mission. It is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, capable of reaching 36,000 mph on its way to Pluto and the frozen, sunless reaches of the solar system.
"God has laid out the solar system in a way that requires a certain amount of patience on the part of those who choose to explore it," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said.
The probe, powered by 24 pounds of plutonium, will not land on Pluto but will photograph it, analyze its atmosphere and send data back across the solar system to Earth.
The launch went off without incident, to the relief of anti- nuclear activists who had feared an accident could scatter lethal radioactive material.
Pluto is the only planet discovered by a U.S. citizen, Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, though some astronomers dispute its right to be called a planet. It is a celestial oddball – an icy dwarf unlike the rocky planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars and the gaseous planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
New Horizons is carrying some of Tombaugh’s ashes. His 93-year- old widow, Patricia, was in tears as she watched the liftoff from about four miles away, said daughter Annette Tombaugh-Sitze, who arrived with her family from New Mexico.
"It was so awe-inspiring to watch something like this," Tombaugh- Sitze said. "It’s something you can’t put into words. You just feel it."
The spacecraft will use Jupiter’s gravity as a sling to shave five years off the trip, allowing it to arrive as early as July 2015.
The 1,054-pound spacecraft was loaded with seven instruments that will photograph the surfaces of Pluto and its large moon, Charon, as well as analyze Pluto’s atmosphere.
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