Congratulations To Alan Et. Al., Now hurry up and wait... :) Options

[djellison]

Just a quite post-sep thread to say congratulations to Alan and the team, here's to a clean checkout and small TCM's Many thanks for taking the time to share the experience to date with us here, your efforts are very much appreciated.

Doug

[just-nick]

Like everyone else, let me say congratulations to the entire NH team. Amazing. Dramatic, beautiful, and with just enough tension to make the whole process a real nailbiter.

I also think this was an excellent job of outreach, everything from Alan's appearances on this board to the signature disk. I took more than a couple of skeptics and had them excited after running upstairs and printing out a quick certificate proving that their name was going in to space.

Thanks and congratulations!

--Nick

[Alan Stern]

Like everyone else, let me say congratulations to the entire NH team.  Amazing.  Dramatic, beautiful, and with just enough tension to make the whole process a real nailbiter.

I also think this was an excellent job of outreach, everything from Alan's appearances on this board to the signature disk.  I took more than a couple of skeptics and had them excited after running upstairs and printing out a quick certificate proving that their name was going in to space.

Thanks and congratulations!

--Nick

Thanks to all of you for being interested and for your good wishes. New Horizons is
operating flawlessly, and it looks like the Atlas gave us an almost perfect injection,
with the consequence being that we will have far more fuel for KBO exploration
than we had planned for in our nominal models. More later. Thanks again to all.

-Alan

[DEChengst]

It looks like the Atlas gave us an almost perfect injection,
with the consequence being that we will have far more fuel for KBO exploration
than we had planned for in our nominal models.

During the pre launch pressconference you told that the opening for the post Pluto trajectory was only 0.1 degrees. How much further will this open due to the fuel you saved ?

[Alan Stern]

During the pre launch pressconference you told that the opening for the post Pluto trajectory was only 0.1 degrees. How much further will this open due to the fuel you saved ?

...Perhaps now 0.3 or 0.4 deg.

[ustrax]

I wasn't nervous because...I MISSED IT!!

Congratulations to the amazing people envolved in this amazing mission...Time will fly and, in a blink, we'll be there.

Thank you for building up your dreams.

[DEChengst]

I wasn't nervous because...I MISSED IT!!

I was nervous as hell. I didn't get much sleep on all three of the nights before the launch attempts In the end I got to see a sucessfull launch so I guess it was worth it.

[ljk4-1]

Universe Today Podcast: There Goes New Horizons

Summary - (Thu, 09 Feb 2006) Take a look through any book on our Solar System, and you'll see beautiful photographs of every planet - except one. Eight of our nine planets have been visited up close by a spacecraft, and we've got the breathtaking photos to prove it. Pluto's the last holdout, revealing just a few fuzzy pixels in even the most powerful ground and space-based telescopes.

But with the launch of New Horizons in January, bound to arrive at Pluto in 9 years, we're one step closer to completing our planetary collection - and answering some big scientific questions about the nature of objects in the Kuiper Belt.

Alan Stern is the Executive Director of the Space Science and Engineering Division, at the Southwest Research Institute. He's New Horizon's Principal Investigator.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/po...ons.html?922006