Pluto Flyby

Astronauts have stayed in mock up spaces for about ten months to emulate and understand the hazards of a long travel to Mars in space travel conditions. But can we do that for nine and a half years if we have to travel to Pluto. Difficult! That is one reason why we are choosing to develop alternative modes of travelling in space.
New Horizons began its sojourn in Jan 2006 and after a travel of 4.8 billion kms (24 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun )it will make a flyby 12500 kms from the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto and take reconnaissance images. In the mean time the latest space ships travelling to Mars and Sun have more sophisticated technology than the one employed on New Horizons.
Pluto not long back considered the ninth planet of our solar system was demoted to a dwarf planet since it didn’t fit all the parameters required to be a planet like its wayward trajectory. Thus poor Earth was reduced to an eight planet solar system. Pluto in olden times had just one clinging moon Charon but with time Nix and Hydra were found and in the near past P4. New Horizons sharp camera now has added another moon the newly designated P5.
Monitoring such a long voyage may not have been easy and New Horizons may be quite lucky in the sense that it has not collided with a meteor (it can be destroyed by a one mm grain for it travels at 55000 kmph). The biggest worry for the control rooms now is to put it into ‘bail it out trajectories’ or thrust its disc in front to take all the attacks head on.
The coming week should be as interesting to Astronomers as it should be to the people who look towards the magical skies in amazement.