NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Signals Successful Flyby of Ultima Thule

Almost 10 hours later, the New Horizons team, based at the laboratory, finally received confirmation that the spacecraft had indeed done everything they had asked. In the days and months to come, the mission’s scientists expect to receive pictures of Ultima Thule and scientific data that could shed light on how the sun and planets formed during the solar system’s earliest days.

During the flyby, the spacecraft was busy making scientific observations out of communication. Only hours later did New Horizons turn its antenna toward Earth to send a 15-minute update on its status — no pictures or data from the flyby yet. The message took six hours to travel the 4.1 billion miles at the speed of light to Earth.

At 10:31 a.m., the mission operations center at Johns Hopkins confirmed that radio dish in Madrid, Spain, part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, had locked in to the signal from New Horizons.

“We have a healthy spacecraft,” Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager, announced following a methodical check of the spacecraft’s systems. “We’ve just accomplished the most distant flyby. We are ready for Ultima Thule science transmission.”

Clapping and cheering erupted in the room where the mood had been quiet and nervous a few minutes earlier.

On Monday, the people working on the mission had expressed confidence that everything had gone as planned. “But I’d be kidding you if I didn’t tell you that we’re also on pins and needles to see out how this turns out,” S. Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, had said in a news conference. “We only get one shot at it.”

Tuesday morning, Stern expressed a more jubilant mood on Twitter. "I’m having a pretty good day today. How about you?”

Over the next couple of days, preliminary looks at the data, including what the scientists hope will be striking images of Ultima Thule, will be beamed back to Earth. Twenty months will pass before scientists have the full set of measurements. And they will be eagerly awaiting every bit of that stream.

“We are ready to science the heck out of Ultima Thule,” Stern said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.