How would your boss react if it took nearly 10 years for you to complete one of your work assignments? Okay, forget about completing it, just imagine taking 10 years to get to the best part of an assignment.
Chances are you’d be out of a job.
Luckily for the New Horizons team, NASA was fairly understanding of the almost 10 years it took to finally receive a high-quality, detailed image of the most popular dwarf planet in our solar system – Pluto. In fact, the mission – which included a space craft racing through our solar system at about 30,000 mph – did not take as long as scientists predicted, and they managed to shave approximately one minute off of the mission’s length.
The contempt that many people have held on to since a few prominent scientists knocked our solar system from nine planets down to eight (NASA explains why it is considered a dwarf planet) might be placated by the brilliant images that the New Horizon space craft has sent back since it reached the icy object on July 14, 2015.
See the heart-shaped geographical feature? Pluto still loves us. Promise.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Caitlin is a writer and freelance copyeditor who drinks way too much coffee and is studying to become an astrobiologist. Growing up in the Air Force, she ping-ponged around the U.S., across the Atlantic, and back only to start the process all over again with her husband. Now settled in Tucson, she writes for Virtue Marketing and can be found tweeting at @ifyoureadreamer, writing on her blog, or posting helpful articles for indie and self-published authors.
