When you think of it, Earth is so insignificant in this vastness of space. It’s just a pale blue dot, a mere speck as captured by voyager-1 from within our solar system. We can’t even begin to comprehend how huge the universe is.
Then you read the other news. Trump demands 5 billion dollars for the wall. Sheer irony and contrast in these two news can’t be any starker.
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Thank you Science.
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When people unite to achieve a common purpose, like the scientists at NASA and at JHAPL Lab, sky is no longer the limit. Thanks to all those scientists and administrators.
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Thank you NYT for keeping us informed of these very educational and educational programs. Good luck NASA with this project.
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I remember watching, as a little girl, the moon landing - and thinking in my little-girl mind that this was surely the greatest feat NASA and the USA and the world would ever see. My grandmother-mind wonders what miracles and feats NASA and the world will uncover in the next fifty years? Or 100? Or 500? I wish I could be here to see.
Happy New Year NASA - you done good.
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Thank you. Space Science and Technology without a vision and sense of mystery is merely a set of tools that lead to stuff like “militarization of space”. Hinduism brings real wisdom of self and the cosmos.
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The flyby is important to establish "rights of navigation in interstellar space." The Chinese are probably already considering militarizing the place and establishing a no-fly zone. Thank goodness for Mr. Trump's insight in establishing a Space Force.
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Space Force! I hear we all get little hats…
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Hearty congratulations to NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for the fantastic scientific and technological achievement of managing the outstandingly successful New Horizons Mission.
We await with bated breath the launch in 2021 of The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope in construction that will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will provide greatly improved resolution and sensitivity over the Hubble, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology.
Hopefully these great missions will provide substantial proof to our (Indian) tradition speak about the relativity of time and space in a variety of ways. The medieval books speak of countless universes, time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on.
Interestingly, as put by Carl Sagan "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang."
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@N.G. Krishnan. Beautifully said...thank you!
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Yes to science! At a time when drumph denies climate change and ignores science (as well as common sense, decency, intelligence, etc), it's heartening to read about the amazing feat, a scientific and engineering triumph. It's mind-boggling and inspiring.
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I was 10 when Sputnik was launched and everyone began yelling at fifth-graders because we didn't know as much science as Russian kids, who would thus destroy us. We struck back by building a model of a Vanguard satellite out of aluminum-painted cardboard.
But I've been following the space program ever since, and I pronounce it a splendid success. Perhaps it works so well (for other nations as well as ours) precisely because it isn't related to any sort of government or social engineering plans or ideologies. It's just humans (any variety) against nature, and thus it's the sort of thing we're rather good at.
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@Mark Kinsler
Your conclusion is a bit jarring. No, it's not humans against nature, it's humans making use of nature, a nature that we are part of and without which we would not exist. And, sad to say, one of the things that made us good at it was conflict, whether military (WW II) or ideological (the Cold War).
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What is it about mankind that achievements like New Horizons are so breathtakingly amazing and that it joins achievements by man century after century, yet the simplest things like getting along with one's neighbors continues to elude us for virtually thousands of years. We can think of hundreds of reasons why we don't get along and at the same time work as an incredible team to launch a space craft that will visit Pluto.
Maybe it is just that human beings question whether we even deserve civilization. Tomorrow we start a new year and a week from now we will still be working to open the government, divided by party, religions, cultures, discrimination et al.
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Impressive. Sad that we have wasted decades not going to the moon and starting on mars. We lie in exciting times. I will turn 80 next month and think young people today are so lucky!
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My first telescope was a 3 1/2” reflector at age 13. I have since lived sixty more years of the most exciting new discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. Year by year we gain more understanding of where we exist. I’m 73 this year. Seventy-three years before I was born, there were still human cultural groups who were unaware they were living on the surface of a planet!
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@Chas White, yes, and remember those exciting days when they were first talking about the IGY and the plans for that wonder of wonders, satellites? And all the interest in rockets and the possibility of space travel? And what the dark side of the moon might look like? And what about those “canals” on Mars? Who built them? Somehow, with all we have learned, I miss the magic of that time.
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I love this article, I wish NASA received more funding than the military. Who knows the stuff we could be learning from other civilizations.
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Even still, suppose NASA received just 5% of our current military budget (an extra 29 billion dollars a year for the space agency). we'd see amazing things! Probably a manned trip to Mars!
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@Josh Reyes. we should take our $ from the military and invest it into NASA...now that would be money well spent...enough of wasting our fortune and assets on corporate wars over antiquated commodities and personal power grabs...we are so much ore then that and we should not tolerate the extreme dysfunction of the ignorant and un-evolved....this space exploration shows our true greatness as human beings and the profound greatness of our culture and dreams & ambitions....not bottom feeding criminality. We need to look up (literally stop looking at cell phones!) and wonder and imagine..then heroic innovation can transform our self imposed sickness. I am greatly encouraged by these developments!
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Wow. Amazing feat by the scientific and engineering community who dreamed, designed, built, launched and shepherded this spacecraft out as far as you can almost think. In addition to be able to maintain communications and telemetry at several billion miles distant is just mind blowing. Hats off to the folks at NASA.
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It is good to have an event like this. Put aside the troubles for a bit. Find the place in the night sky. Even if you can't see it you know it's there. I feel lucky to have lived through a 70 year period from nothing man made in the night sky to the point of a third vessel leaving the solar system. Never took any missions for granted and still remain amazed with each new image or achievement. I call it video games for the old. The only difference is it plays out in your head.
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@richard wiesner "I feel lucky to have lived through a 70 year period from nothing man made in the night sky to the point of a third vessel leaving the solar system."
Same here - although I'm a few years younger. I have a cousin two years younger than me whom our grandfather nicknamed 'Sputnik' in honor of the first man-made satellite that was launched around the time he was born.
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@richard wiesner I believe we have been living through the period of mankind's greatest achievements, being reached at astounding speed. My baba (grandmother) escaped from the pogroms of Jews in the Ukraine, on foot over mountains through winter snows, before the first motorcar, and watched, live, as man walked on the moon.
What I find depressing, though, is that that period has ended. Rather than fascination with achievement and a burning desire to participate, today's younger generation are glued to cell phones, worrying about what might be said about them on Facebook.
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My goodness, but I find this so fascinating. My mother, gone now over forty years, would always when I asked about these things would simply reply: “Be a good person here on earth. When you get to heaven all your questions will be answered”.
In my heart, despite of all the feeble minded naysayers out there, I strongly believe there are other civilations, perhaps thousands or millions for them, out there.
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@Tom " I strongly believe there are other civilations, perhaps thousands or millions for them, out there." AND PERHAPS MANY OF THEM ARE SAYING THE SAME THING ABOUT US.
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soon humans will get to inhabit and destroy other planets.
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Hundreds of millions of dollars to “boldly go where no one has gone before” and advance humankind’s knowledge of the universe.
Five billion dollars for a wall.
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@C K Give it time. In the centuries ahead, perhaps, we'll be building space walls to keep "them" from approaching us. Making Earth Great Again !
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I highly recommend interested readers check out the book written about the New Horizons project: "Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto" by Alan Stern, David Grinspoon. The decades-long challenges that were met to allow a sucessful mission to Pluto and beyond makes this latest accomplishment even more grand!
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All silliness aside (see my prior comment on this article), how appropriate that this should happen at Christmastime. In the spirit of Christmas, mankind is expending whatever capital (time) we have left buying ever bigger and bigger big screen TV's while the foundation of our planet (i.e., its inhabitability) crumbles. What a waste.
And, we don't need a "Space Force" either - we need an "Earth Force" - a concerted effort to take care of what we have left, before it is too late.
By the way, for those picking the first bozo to go Mars, I have a recommendation. His address is WH D.C. Perhaps we can "Make Mars Great Again." One way ticket please.
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Makes me feel like a part of something larger and more wonderful than daily existence. Great article, thank you.
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Oh, I am so happy to have some good New Year's event to look forward to instead of listening to Trump complain form the White House, which no doubt, he will do. Thanks for posting the data to follow this exciting event which certainly will beat the Times Square hullabaloo.
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Perhaps the New Horizons spacecraft will teach us something profound about the universe including the origins and emergence of life. It is so much the case that, "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." Carl Sagan.
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Young people don't realize how compelling the NASA programs was in the 1960s and early 1970s..still going strong. I kind of resent when people use this to knock religion as many NASA scientists have undergrads from Jesuit Universities..
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Wait wait wait. Avoiding the arguments about the validity of religion, let alone the recent revelations about the Catholic Church, this spacecraft in no way represents religion. If the Bible had anything to say about gravitation and velocity, then you might have an argument. But in reality this is the achievement of thousands of men and women across various fields of science. This is a triumph for all humanity, not for your particular ideology.
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NASA represents science and the quest for knowledge. Religion represents myth and superstition and it antithetical to science.
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@arthur: If we were still following the religious (Catholic) teaching of the universe we would still believe that the earth is the center of the universe and the sun orbited around the earth. Galileo learned the hard way to do not contradict the Church when he said that the earth is rotating around the Sun.
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Yet we are destroying our own planet. Ironic, don’t ya think?
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This is cool. Maybe earth’s priorities would be better served by sacrificing our draw to reach further into outer space and, instead, putting our efforts into solving now, which is kind of late, the problems of climate change.
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Solving climate change is a noble goal. In fact, a large percentage of NASA's resources are being used for Earth Sciences.
That said, it would be a mistake to forgo space exploration because climate change is a problem. We must dare to venture out beyond the horizon—to inspire, to explore, to answer our most profound questions—even though we have difficulties here at home. Otherwise, we'll never be able to look beyond Earth.
We're always going to be imperfect. There are always going to be threats to our existence, even if we eliminate our nuclear weapons and curb our emissions.
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@William Fister
Please, no more either-or. That's a big mistake.
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And yet we let religion and ignorance control our collective futures. CERN and physicists give me a glimmer of hope. NASA can do it again if we have the political will.
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Uh... I think you mean "Ever visited by one of Earth's spacecraft."
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All of these things will be the building blocks upon which we will be able to continue our existence in the universe if and only we can manage to overcome man's inherent penchant for self destruction and denial with compassion and a true sense of self and our place in the universe. I find it utterly fascinating, being the only living things within trillions of miles we justify killing one another on daily basis. Maybe one day in the distant future............
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Fair winds and following seas, New Horizons!
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"What a piece of work is man"
So heartening during this era of perpetual reminders of the sad state of mankind that we're also capable of these miraculous accomplishments.
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"Glass half-empty" attitudes only serve to diminish the miracles we see before us.
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@Dave
It would seem Mr Wilson sees 2 glasses, one half empty and 1 quite full.
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