‘New Horizons’ is the first mission of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Pluto, a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. The United States space agency commissioned the APL in Maryland to plan the mission which was launched in 2006. Now, it has been revealed that a Brooktondale woman, Ann Harch, played an important role in the space agency’s Pluto mission.

According to Harch, a former research specialist at Cornell University, on July 14 when the spacecraft was getting ready to travel to the dwarf planet, she imagined the vessel performing all its functions like executing all the instructions researchers authored and capturing stunning images of the planet.

Harch said she was very excited about the mission and her excitement made her watch the whole mission in her mind. Harch, who lived in Brooktondale for more than two decades, said those were one of the best moments of her life. She felt for some moments like she is on the spacecraft travelling to the dwarf planet.

While talking about how the vessel managed to capture its target, Harch said the team managing the spacecraft sent many commands to the vessel’s processors. The vessel was given about 30,000 individual commands to perform its tasks, Harch said.

Harch said, “I liken our job sometimes to a videogame, where you have to work within the constraints of the spacecraft itself. But the spacecraft costs half a billion dollars and the encounter is 3 billion miles away, so it’s a little bit more scary”.