--- title: Pluto New Horizons: The Encounter Means More Than You Think description: Yes, the mission is about the science, but it's also about humanity's—and America's—ability to do things right canonical: https://time.com/3957126/pluto-new-horizons-meaning/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-14T16:11:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:22.814Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why the Pluto Encounter Means More Than You Think og:description: The mission is about more than science og:url: https://time.com/3957126/pluto-new-horizons-meaning/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt96b9a28f2e981824/69885ac9e20a872273a8c46c/pluto3.jpg?branch=production&width=1042&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1042 og:image:height: 586 og:image:alt: Ready for its close-up: Pluto as seen by the New Horizons probe from a distance of 476,000 miles (768,000 km) og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why the Pluto Encounter Means More Than You Think twitter:description: The mission is about more than science twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt96b9a28f2e981824/69885ac9e20a872273a8c46c/pluto3.jpg?branch=production&width=1042&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Pluto Encounter Means More Than You Think > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: A Year in Space - Ep.1: Leaving Home [Watch (HLS stream): A Year in Space - Ep.1: Leaving Home](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/6ookw4W2.m3u8) (13:31)  _Published 2021-03-11. A Year in Space - Ep.1: Leaving Home_  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 14, 2015 4:11 PM UTC  Ready for its close-up: Pluto as seen by the New Horizons probe from a distance of 476,000 miles (768,000 km) Ready for its close-up: Pluto as seen by the New Horizons probe from a distance of 476,000 miles (768,000 km) NASA  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 14, 2015 4:11 PM UTC This week at least, let’s call Pluto a planet. You’d better get used to it, because given the kind of love the little world is getting, it’s an honorific that might be sticking around. Pluto was always a cosmic screwball, a ball of rock and ice smaller than our moon that tumbled out of the Kuiper Belt, fell in with a group of eight legitimate planets well above its station, and hung around along enough that it became, de facto, one of the gang. That was never a sure thing. While the planets from close-in Mercury to distant Neptune orbit in the flat, more or less around the sun’s equator, Pluto dive bombs the solar system at an inclination of 17 degrees, plunging below and above the equatorial plane. Its orbit is an ellipse, with a maximum distance of 4.59 billion miles (7.38 billion km) from the sun and a minimum of 2.76 billion miles (4.44 billion km), while the other planets orbit in more or less a circle. Until 2006, Pluto was called a planet, before sticklers at the International Astronomical Union, who decide such things, busted it down to a dwarf planet, for a whole lot of reasons that made perfect sense astronomically but none at all sentimentally. But never mind now, because Pluto, the runt of the solar system litter, is currently everybody’s favorite. The reason, of course, is the New Horizons probe, which after a nine-year, 3 billion-mile (4.8 billion km) journey, just passed within 7,750 miles (12,472 km) of Pluto’s frozen surface, snapping pictures and taking readings all the way. The images and the data took 4.5 hours to reach Earth even moving at light speed, and most of the time the ship has been in space it has simply been storing what it’s learned in on-board computers. The data dump that finally began when the probe passes Pluto will take up to 16 months to complete. But the pictures come first and the best that have been returned so far showed a brown and tan world with a range of curious features, including four Missouri-sized dark spots along its equator. In the southern hemisphere is a vast, pale region shaped exactly like, yes, a heart, because while science doesn’t always go all serendipitous on you, when it does, it makes the most of the moment. In some ways, however, the bigger deal is that New Horizons is where it is at all. The probe, which is one of the smallest ever built—about the size of a grand piano—and easily the fastest, at 31,000 mph (49,900 k/h), arrived at its closest approach to Pluto just one minute later than was forecast by the trajectory planners when it was launched. And it nicely hit the 36 by 57 mile (60 by 90 km) window it was aiming for—the equivalent of a commercial airliner landing within a tennis ball’s width of its target, as NASA likes to boast. Today especially, boasting is something NASA is entitled to do. New Horizons completes a half-century reconnaissance of all nine planets in our solar system, with some—Uranus and Neptune—getting just one visit each, while others got many. Mars is currently so well-populated by probes that it has something close to a mini-infrastructure. And not to put too fine or jingoistic a point on it, but the overwhelming majority of spacecraft ranging anywhere in the solar system carry the NASA decal and the American flag. That matters. It will be a while—many generations—before human beings truly become a multi-planet species. And the world we’re likeliest to stake our first claim to, Mars, is a forbidding place that at best will serve as a cosmic equivalent of the McMurdo Station in Antarctica—a research base that is far more a work station than a home. But humanity—led by the U.S.—has made a start, sending our buoys throughout the solar system where they bob and drift and teach us things we never could have known if we didn’t have the smarts and the will to spend the money and build the machines. The points the species puts on the board when one of these improbable ships gets where it’s supposed to go and does what it’s supposed to do are the hardest-won of all. Our opponent in these cases isn’t another nation-state with which we’re competing for land or influence or wealth, it’s the laws of physics themselves. Difficult as our terrestrial challenges seem, they are all parts of a system we created. There was no such thing as the laws of economics until we emerged from the swamp and created them. Ditto the laws of politics. We are always free to change the rules—and we often do. The laws of nature have always been here and beating them—climbing out of the gravity well of Earth, keeping a machine like New Horizons powered in the deep freeze and deep black of space—is not the kind of thing that can be settled over a negotiating table in Vienna or Geneva. Physics won’t compromise; it won’t relent on one of its points if you relent on one of yours. Playing its game by its rules is the only way to win. It is both good for the world and a bit sad for science that on the very morning New Horizons made its rendezvous with Pluto, the biggest headlines are going to the much-awaited international nuclear deal with Iran. Peace is undeniably a good thing, but it’s something we can make happen any old time if we simply choose to. Interplanetary travel is something else. Surely, it is just coincidence that among the many Tweets sent out by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani about the nuclear deal [is one that reads](https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/620881594937688064), “#IranDeal shows constructive engagement works. With this unnecessary crisis resolved, new horizons emerge with a focus on shared challenges.” Rouhani’s new horizons, of course, is very different from NASA’s New Horizons. Both are historic; both are extraordinary news. But with due applause for the peacemakers, today belongs to the explorers. ### PHOTOS: 20 Breathtaking Images of Earth From Space  Aleppo, Syria, May 26, 2013 – The Citadel of Aleppo – medieval fortified palace DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Belfast, Northern Ireland, Nov. 3, 2013 – “Wish,” a large-scale art work DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Utah, USA, April 22, 2013 – Colorado River DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Cuanza River, Angola, April 28, 2013 – Cambambe Dam DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Doha, Qatar, March 4, 2013 – Artificial island spanning nearly four million sq meters. DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Dunalley, Australia, Jan. 6, 2013 – fires, false color image (red = healthy vegetation) DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Australia, April 22, 2013 – Great Barrier Reef DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Gwadar coast, Pakistan Sept. 29, 2013 – new island created by earthquake in Pakistan DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Croatia, Feb. 16, 2013 – Galešnjak (Island of Love) DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Hong Kong, China May 9, 2013 – giant rubber duck DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, March 22, 2013 – Manam Volcano DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Namib Desert, Namibia, May 13, 2013 – Sossusvlie area DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Naples, Italy, Feb. 19 2013 – Mount Vesuvius DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Niger, Feb. 13, 2013 – Arlit Uranium Mine DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Schooner Cays, Bahamas, May 26, 2013 DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Sochi, Russia, March 17, 2013 – Site of 2014 winter Olympics DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Near the city of Sur, Oman, Feb. 13, 2013 – massive “green tide” DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Valencia, Spain, July 19, 2013 – Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia and Gulliver Park with an enormous fiberglass model of Lemuel Gulliver trapped DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Versailles, France, Aug. 20, 2013 – Palace of Versailles DigitalGlobe—Getty Images  Xi'an, China, Sept. 24, 2013 – Shiyuan Park DigitalGlobe—Getty Images _Read next:_ [_NASA Just Debuted This Amazing Pluto Image on Instagram_](http://time.com/3957077/pluto-image-instagram/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day_](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It is a long road and it is very hard. I've seen him behind the scenes. I've seen the hard work he's put in, and here we are, and this is the moment. And so, it can't not Lot pull you in and a joke or two here and there. [ MUSIC ] I do sometimes dream of being in space. Sometimes I'll wake up and I'll tell Miko, I had this dream I was launching a space shuttle or a space station or sometimes there are people with me. Like she's been with me in my dreams, my kids have. But in reality, while I'm up there most of humanity is 250 miles below you. If anything goes wrong on earth. You're not coming home [ MUSIC ] [ INAUDIBLE ] How's it going for you now? It's actually going pretty good. [ MUSIC ] In float suit Let me know if you're good to stay in for another hour. Got my [ UNKNOWN ] [ MUSIC ] For decades human beings as a whole and Americans in particular have been talking about going to Mars. Mars. As long ago as 1969, after the Apollo 11 moon landing, people were predicting Americans would be on Mars by 1975. It has been a dream deferred. For half a century. [ MUSIC ] Getting to Mars requires multiple systems in Nasa to be working at once. The system that's the most fragile and destructible of all, however, is the human body. It's the one we didn't invent. It's the one we're stuck with. [ MUSIC ] If we plan to get to Mars, we have to figure out how to make that biological machine survive in a place it was not built to survive. [ MUSIC ] Scott Kelly. Has been working toward this mission his entire career. He's been working toward this mission his entire life in some respects. [ MUSIC ] He knows what it's like to have a football field size piece of $ 100 billion infrastructure. In his control and now he is going back for one year to run one of the most important bio- medical studies NASA has ever run [ MUSIC ] Yeah, the way he misses the people, and then the weather. It's kinda like. Well, it's going outside. There's no sun on your face. You never feel this on my feet, this fire. You never feel this cold breeze. It's always exactly the same. So I had this Texans hat. And it was completely faded and stained and it was the best hat ever and then I lost them. So, I went and I bought two of the exact same hat. This one's gonna go to Cuz I stand with me. But then I took the other one, and I strewed him to the fence over there. And he's going to be exposed to the Houston weather for a year. And he's going to turn back into old smokey for me when I get home. You're gonna come home, and a year later, you're gonna see earth changed something too. I hope not too much. [ LAUGH ] We'll figure it out. When the first time like I actually had an interaction with you at work you came in. And I thought. It was so weird to me now to think of. You thought it was my brother? I couldn't tell the difference between the two of you which is weird to me now. Because I'm like I can tell When you; re walking away I know exactly who's who. [ MUSIC ] Yeah, we used to look, I guess, very much alike. To some extent still, for people who don't know us. And my mother used to dress us the same. Now look at these old pictures with Orange shorts, and a striped orange shirt, and a bow tie. [ MUSIC ] When we were little we had our own secret language. We did almost everything together, and I remember laying in bed one time in the morning, and talking to my brother about how we were gonna build an airplane in the back yard. We just said at five or six years old we figured we could do that. Like we had the skill to do this. Obviously, we didn't. We didn't get very far with the airplane or later with the spaceship. [ MUSIC ] I think twins tend to be a little bit different. I think their relationship is different than just siblings. [ MUSIC ] You okay? Yep. [ MUSIC ] So, this thing is not meant to walk around in. [ LAUGH ] No. NASA's doing kind of a comparative study between my brother Mark and I, since we're identical twins. I call him much more when I'm in space than I do on earth. And it's because you just feel like you're so far away, you need to try to maintain some kind of connection. I'll be probably more excited for him than anybody else. I've flown four flights. This'll be his fourth flight. For my mom's passed away, but for my dad to have gone through this whole experience eight times now, that's a lot. [ MUSIC ] Throughout history people have done things that are risky. So even though it is a risky thing to be doing, and I think it's a lot more risky than some people might think, it, in my mind, is worth it even if the unfortunate And tragic thing was to happen to myself and my crew mates, I still think it's worth it. Being part of something that you feel is larger than yourself [ MUSIC ] [ INAUDIBLE ] it's going to be a long year for I'll tell you that. Dad, I can call you from space and harass you, just as much as I can harass you over the phone here. You don't have to worry. Okay. Thank you. [ LAUGH ] Got your tunes, your headphones. Uh- huh. [ MUSIC ] [ LAUGH ] That was funny. Oh. Yep. What did you say this morning that was funny? And I told you don't say that, yay. God. It would. What was I talking about. Oh, when you said goodbye, dad. Goodbye, dad. I'm going to miss your silky smoothness. Should I show you how the remote works? I think I got it now, I think I got it. We're on our own. I'm going to jump in the shower. Real quick. Okay. [ MUSIC ] [ NOISE ] Excuse me everybody! Can we be really quiet for a sound test real quick? Sound check. [ MUSIC ] Hello Scott And Gabby and I just wanted to say Bon Voyage. How do you say that? Bon Voyage. And you know we know you only have a couple of days in the US and then you are gone for I don't know like five years or something. Do you know what it is? How long? One year in space. Hey dad. I just want you to know that I'm really gonna miss you. You made so many sacrifices over the years for Charlotte and I. You helped me become the person I am today. Hi Dad, I'd like to wish you good luck on your trip. It's exciting and you're going to be working, but remember to take in the view. I love you, Daddy. [ INAUDIBLE ] People ask me what am I going to do, and I always just say, you know, I'm going to just see how far love travels. You want to know how long a year is. It's 31. Six million seconds. It will be 31. 6 million times you're on my mind. I said to my brother I'll be in space and flying all the way around the sun one lap at a year. And he's like so will I. The rest of us will be doing the same thing. On spaceship Earth. I get the question, how does it feel to be the daughter of an astronaut. You know he's been an astronaut since I was one year's old, I wouldn't know anything else. I can't compare it to anything else, so everybody's like yeah it's so cool, your dad's an astronaut he's going to space for a year. And for me, I'm like, yeah. He's my dad. [ LAUGH ] You know? He's my dorky dad. The one who gets mad at me if I don't do my home work, or if I don't come home on time. [ LAUGH ] He's still my dad, no matter what his job is. And And he's a great one at that. 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