The conquest of Pluto – ElEspectador.com

spacecraft New Horizons , launched by NASA in 2006, spent Tuesday at the shorter distance of Pluto , a historic flight will allow more information on the dwarf planet , according to the US space agency.

“The New Horizons probe achieved its closest approach to Pluto after a day 3,000 million miles “he said NASA commentator, while viewers were flaming flags in a room packed Center Johns Hopkins Applied Physics, in the suburbs of Washington (east).

At a speed of more than 49,300 km / h, after a journey of 5,000 million km, New Horizons passed only 12,430 km of Pluto at exactly 11h49 GMT, NASA said.

“It’s time to celebrate because we made the most of the way” , said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.

“We have completed the initial recognition of the solar system, an undertaking begun under President (John F.) Kennedy over 50 years ago and continued today under the leadership of President (Barack) Obama,” he recalled.

The agency expects to receive a signal from the probe on Tuesday afternoon to see if the device survived the encounter.

Experts said there is a possibility to 10,000 the probe to collide with space debris in the nearby region Neptune, known as the Kuiper Belt.

According to Stern, the Kuiper Belt-the wide ring of debris surrounding the System Solar and evolves where Pluto is “more or less a shooting gallery, where there are many small primordial comets and other objects smaller than Pluto.”

Never before a ship had ventured to the Kuiper belt . “We’re flying into the unknown,” Stern told reporters on Monday

-. New discoveries –

What is known so far Pluto probably fit in a couple of pages, Stern said. Instead, the data sent New Horizons if all goes well-will allow write text books this whole mysterious celestial body.

For now, the pioneering mission NASA has been able to confirm the existence of polar ice on Pluto and found escaping nitrogen atmosphere.

Stern also said the dwarf planet, with a radius of 1,185 km, It is a bit larger than previously thought. And many more details are expected in the coming days.

“In 24 hours, the quality of the resolution of our images go from 15 km per pixel, less than 100 meters per pixel,” said Cathy Olkin , deputy project scientist. “We’ll see how high are the mountains and valleys how low”

Then scientists see the sunrise and sunset on the back -inexplorada- Pluto.; will create a complete picture of star and five satellites; and will make a study of the dust in the outer Solar System and the atmosphere around Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

According to John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the science mission of NASA, details on Pluto has captured public attention because it reveals news about the origin of the earth and generates more questions, such as whether extraterrestrial life is possible.

“The Pluto system is a fossil of the beginnings of our solar system “, Grunsfeld said. “Now we know where we come from (…) This opens a new realm in exploration.”