- NASA's New Horizons' epic quest as the spacecraft completes its flyby, capturing first-ever images of Pluto and its moons.
- PLUTO: FIRST ENCOUNTER chronicles the drama of a quest that will bring the once 9th planet into focus, shattering all we have known or dreamed of this small place; perhaps giving it new status within the Universe.
The world can't help but take notice of Pluto on July 14, 2015.
In 2006, a piano sized spacecraft named New Horizons became the fastest to ever launch, reaching the moon in just nine hours, ten times faster than any Apollo mission. It reached Jupiter in just over a year when other missions took over six. For nearly a decade, New Horizons has been traveling at breakneck speeds, racing to the very edges of the solar system, to a place known as the Kuiper Belt where the icy relics of the solar system drift. These relics thought to carry the beginnings of life, clues to how the bigger planets formed.
It is here where Pluto lives, five billion kilometres from earth and soon we will see it for the very first time.
What is at stake here, is not only the drama of precision maneuvers, exploration and engineering led by a talented team of Planetary scientists and mission operation leads from NASA and abroad; but also a chance at solving a mystery, an outcome that might give new understanding to Pluto's importance.
In this hour, we'll revisit Pluto's discovery, its rise as a planetary rock star and its decline to dwarf planet status.
We'll meet its champions and detractors and learn of the divide between astronomers and planetary scientists.
We'll reveal what the best science in the world knows of the planet and what they're about to learn - surprises in store as this imaginative world comes into focus in real time.
There's just one shot - and we've got your inside ticket to the ride.
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