The crowd at New Horizons mission control counts down to the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14. | NASA/Bill Ingalls
On July 14, I was driving back to Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md. — mission control for the New Horizons spacecraft — when I suddenly found myself swept up in an interplanetary race. Earlier in the day, I huddled with the science and engineering teams as the probe completed its historic Pluto flyby.
Or rather, as we all hoped it had. We wouldn’t know for sure until New Horizons’ “mission accomplished” signal arrived, and because of the enormous distance involved, that signal would take a tedious 4.6 hours to reach Earth. So we all took a break while waiting for the triumphant message, due to arrive at 8:53 p.m.
