Lucy’s new neighbor, downloading New Horizon’s data and more reader feedback
New Horizons phones home
In “Pluto: Explored” (SN: 6/27/15, p. 16), Christopher Crockett chronicled New Horizons’ long journey to the dwarf planet. He followed up with a report on the successful flyby in “Pluto’s icy landscape comes into view” (SN: 8/8/15, p. 6).
“Having read that early images of Pluto encoded in radio waves would take 4.5 hours to reach Earth from the New Horizons space probe, I was surprised to read further on that ‘the data won’t finish downloading until late 2016,’ ” wrote Greg Skala. “Why the long delay for the later data?”