// block 365279 · space · 14 July 2015

New Horizons flies past Pluto

The moment this block marks: the closest approach of New Horizons to Pluto, 07:49:57 Eastern time, 14 July 2015, 11:49:57 UTC. The first block mined after it is block 365,279, 14 July 2015, 11:52:43 UTC.

New Horizons left Earth in January 2006, the fastest spacecraft ever launched, on its way to Pluto. After nearly ten years and almost five billion kilometres, it reached its target on 14 July 2015, about a minute earlier than predicted at launch, threading a window in space only 60 by 90 kilometres wide.

It did not stop. Crossing the Pluto system at nearly 50,000 kilometres an hour, it had a single chance, and it spent its closest approach with its instruments turned towards Pluto and its moons, out of contact with Earth. The last image it had sent beforehand already showed a large bright region on Pluto's surface, informally named the heart.

At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, the team could only wait. About thirteen hours later, at 00:53 UTC on 15 July, a fifteen-minute series of status messages reached mission operations through NASA's Deep Space Network: the flyby had gone as planned. Sending all the data back to Earth would take sixteen months.

The first block mined after the closest approach, block 365,279, came less than three minutes later, at 11:52 UTC, while New Horizons was still observing in silence, more than thirteen hours before anyone on Earth knew it had come through. Its hash, like every hash, can be checked on any node.

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Sources

• Johns Hopkins APL, New Horizons: The Path to Pluto and Beyond, mission timeline: “July 14 07:49:57 EDT Closest Approach to Pluto”
• NASA, NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter, 14 July 2015
• NASA Science, New Horizons: “About 13 hours later, at 00:53 UT on July 15, a 15-minute series of status messages was received”