New Horizons

Last week, Matilda and I watched the launch of a NASA spacecraft called New Horizons. It was the beginning of a 9 year trip to Pluto and its moon, Charon. (Pluto may also have two or more other moons.) The rocket travels at 100 times the speed of a commercial airliner, the fastest craft to have ever launched from Earth, and will travel the entire solar system. In February 2007, it will get a boost from Jupiter's gravity, propelling it on to the outer reaches of the solar system. It will do a "flyby" study of Pluto and Charon, 3 billion miles from Earth, in July 2015. From 2016-2020, it will encounter the Kuiper Belts. The Kuiper Belt is a part of space beyond the orbit of Neptune, which is populated by ice dwarf worlds completely unlike our own. (Yes, I had to look this up. I had no idea how much the idea of our solar system had changed since I studied the planets in third grade!)

Matilda will be ten years old when New Horizons meets Pluto. I figure they will probably discuss it in her 5th grade class. I am glad that she will be able to say, "My mom watched the launch with me when i was 3 months old," even if she won't actually remember it.