Maryland. I am dwayne brown with nasas office of communication. We have an astronaut and associate administrator at nasa head quarters, alan stern, and Alice Bowman Mission Operations manager at john hopkins applied physics laboratory. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, pluto as never seen before. Three, two one. [applause] now we have remarks from dr. John grunsfeld . It has been an incredible voyage. I know many of you have been participating the last few days but what it all comes down to is an enormous team of people led by alan stern, a big team here at the john hopkins applied physics laboratory, university of colorado the list goes on and on. Hundreds of scientist, engineers, technicians, and people sewing blankets helping the explorer to visit pluto and fly on beyond. I am so glad you are here to participate in this true exploration exploration. That view is just the first of many, many rewards the team will get especially since pluto didnt turn out to be a featureless planet and we are scratching our heads thinking what will we do with that. Pluto is an interesting world. Of course it would be but it was never a certainty but for the very first time we know that and with that for his First Impression i would like to turn it over to alan stern. Thank you. [applause] well i want to thank john for his remarks and nasa for making this possible. How about that . 50 years ago today the United States was embarking at the beginning of an era of exploring the solar system that will live forever in history. 50 years ago the first spacecraft flew by mars and on that anniversary we complete the exploration. People wor time they broke records for lowcost outer planet exploration, they did some amazing feats and we saw one of them last weekend in terms of that Mission Operation rescue of this flyby that produces images just like the one you saw and many more that will be reining to the ground beginning tomorrow. But stay tuned, stay tuned because our spacecraft is not in communication with the earth. We programmed it to be spending its time taking important data sets that it can only take today. And over the next period of about 1213 hours, the spacecraft will continue to take that data and then it will transmit a message back to the earth for 20 minutes at 9 p. M. Eastern time and we will find out how it is doing. Whether it survived the passage through the pluto system and hopefully it did and we are counting on that there is a little drama because it is true exploration. New new horizons is flying into the unknown. And tomorrow morning, we should see the beginning of a 16month data waterfall. You will see seeing more and more about pluto beginning tomorrow. But if we could put up the best image having a resolution of four kilometers per pictures which is a thousand time better we could do even with the hubble scope telescope e three billion miles away at earth. New horizons took that image yesterday and downlinked to it to ground. That image flew at the speed of light for four and a half hours and received to nasas deep Space Network, the image was opened this morning, and how about a round of applause for that beautiful planet . Now i would like to invite our Mission Manager alice bowman. Dr. Bowman has been leading the operation from the time we wrote the proposal to compete to win this project, all the way through development, through launch, and through an epic three billion mile journey across the solar system. Ally alice . [applause] what an absolute honor it is to be here to be standing here and waiting for those close images to come down. I cannot say enough about how thankful i am that nasa allowed us to build and operate the spacecraft at the physic laboratory. We have a live team and i happen to be the Mission Operation manager but in no way am i taking the credit for this incredible journey. I mean it is definitely a team effort. We depend upon each other to each do your part and to be the experts in our field. And when i stand back this morning and i just think i have to pinch myself. Look what we accomplished. It is truly amazing that human kind can go out and explore those worlds and to see pluto be revealed just before our eyes. It is just fantastic. And i cannot wait until we get these images down starting early tomorrow morning and of course the signal tonight that tells us that spacecraft is healthy and has recorded all of that fantastic data. So thank you, again. Thank you very much. [applause] it has been a great morning. Obviously the story is not over yet. You will hear more about that and what is going to happen this evening. Before we open it up for questions i will toss this to alan. We have video of something that happened this morning with the science team, i believe. Sure. John and i were over at the building on the apl campus where the science team is working, the science team assembled at 5 45 this morning for a chance to see that image of pluto and react and have a little scientific discussion and i think we will give you a peek into it if we can queue it up. [applause] it is not behind the scenes now. You have seen it on the screen and it is going viral on facebook, instagram and every other social media probably as well. We are happy to be here as representatives of the big team and nasa and dwayne . We are opened up for questions and social media, oh my goodness the numbers are astounding. The world is excited. Raise your hand media, we will start with you and go to social media media, and we will try to get as many questions in as possible. Raise them high. Last time i stayed over here. Give your name and affiliation. Tell us about pluto. Are their mountains . Are there craters . Tell us what you see . Sure. Can we queue that image back up . This image is oriented with north of the top and so the dark region you see are near plutos equator. The planet is about 1500 miles across to give you a scale. It has a thin or rarefied nitrogen atmosphere which you cannot see in this image but what you can see, and it is possible for folks behind the scene, to make a larger attraction screen, you can see regions of various times and we know this is clearly a world where there is snow on the surface and the snow goes back into the atmosphere each 248 years orbit. Those have been observed to move around. On the surface scene seen from three billion miles away. If you are a scientist like i am you want to see the supporting data. The topagraphy, and you want to see color data and identify the units, you want to determine watt the different areas are made from you want to see the thermal maps so we can understand the brightest areas are the coldest areas or is that some other story pluto is trying to tell us. And we want to see higher resolution images and tomorrow we will have pictures with resolutions ten times that image and we will have better image that is dramatically better still. There is a lot more data coming down and we could not be happier about the performance of had spacecraft or the pluto system. I notice there is also color information in that picture. I am wondering if you can tell me first about the color data you got and also if you see evidence of atmosphere hazes or clouds or something you can see happening in the images. Can we put up the color image . Is that possible . There is another image i am looking for. If they dont have it backstage i am not able to show it to you. Okay. So on the monitor it is hard for me to see, but we know that pluto has Color Variations across the surface. When we stretch them we will have a better handle on how strong the variations are and expect to show you more later in the day. I looked at the images briefly over in the science work area and i was looking for evidence of plumes and hazes and emily, i could not see them. That doesnt mean they are not there. A real proper analysis of it will require some time. And maybe higher resolution images. Hi mary ann crammer, this is very exciting for everybody, i am sure. But i am wondering specifically for alice how are you feeling right now knowing that your craft is out there flying by the pluto system and you will not hear from it for a while . Thanks. That is a really good question. I havent had very much sleep and we always talk about the spacecraft as being a babe or a child. We lost signal at 11 17 and there was nothing anybody on the Operation Team could do. Just trust we prepared it well to set off on its journey and do what it needed to do. But there were a lot of us in the opcenter even though we knew that spacecraft wasnt going to be talking to us but we were there and wanted to be with this as it went through this journey. And i am feeling a little bit nervous just like you do when you set your child off but i have absolute confidence that it is going to do watt it needs to do to collect that science and it will turn around and send us that burst of data and tell us it is okay. I guess it is a feeling of nervous and proud at the same time. Okay. Before you ask your question and gave and affiliation if you can raise your hand high. A lot of folks in the light we cant see. Stacy, star talk radio, i have a question from one of our listeners. How long can new horizons continue to transmit before its power expires . I will take a crack at that. New horizons is powered by rtg which stands for radio thermo electric generator and that is the same kind of power supply that deep Space Missions that far fly too far from the sun for solar rays to work use. That is developed by nasa and the department of energy. The element inside is plutonium which was named after pluto in the 30s. That produces heat and from the heat thermo couples convert that into power for the spacecraft. When we launched new horizons was producing 250 watts but that decay decays every year. It is currently 232 and every year three less watts and as it declined we will not be able to operate the computer and communication system. We have estimated that point will be reached sometime in the mid2030s. Roughly 20 years from now. At that point the spacecraft will be approximately hundred astronomical units from the sun. Over the next 20 years, if the spacecraft is healthy and operates, the fly by is the Building Blocks of planet like pluto, and we have a chance to go further and explore the deep breaches like the voyager did and hopefully return data that adds to the store house and the environment in the solar system and cross that boundary and sample inter stellar space with modern implementation i am trying to get to as many media as i can. Help me out and ask one question and dont sneak a followup in. These folks will be available throughout the day for oneonone interviews. John with poplar mechanics. I am just wondering when the data comes in how it will be prioritize prioritized . It is a slow 56k connection coming back from pluto so how has it been sorted to be prioritize prioritized as it comes in. That is actually a nuance story. So let me start by saying over the next couple months the spacecraft, for the next couple weeks, the spacecraft is sending some of the highest priority data back to the ground and around the first of august we will transition to a mode where the spacecraft is sending low speed data sets which are taken and recorded at a slower speed and easier to plan for. We chose those to come to the ground first to give alice and her team a muchneeded break of what has been seven days around the clock operations. We wanted to give them a break and that is why we have the low speed in august and september and they will crank it back up and we will start the planning for that in a couple weeks. We agreed with nasa long time ago which data sets were first, second and third priority and we will send them down in that order. Initially we were going to send all of the data down as a browse data set that is compresed compressed on the spacecraft so we can get it down quickly and with that safely on the ground we would go back and send everything a second time. The entire process i described takes a period of 16 months and we expect to finish the last of the data in november or arcked october of next year. What is the actually data rate . 56k is much too high. We wish it was 56k. Well we call it rate stepping. As the spacecraft gets as viewed from the ground higher in the sky and the ground antenna increases in elevation following that spacecraft we can increase the data rate. So at the lowest rate the ten degree elevation horizon we are at a thousand bits per second. Now when we transition into a spin mode we can actually get higher up and at the top of that the max data rate is about 4,000 bits per second. We will take two questions and then we will go to social media which is no surprise it is exploding with excitement. So questions. One question and then social media and then i am coming over here because i have not hit this side yet. Go ahead. Tim cramer for northeast Astronomy Forum in new york where you will be next year and we are excited and i am excited to be here today. My question is about the cratering on chiron verses pluto. Looked like there were a lot of cas craters at chiron and this image shows maybe one crater. I wonder is that real . Do you see a lot less craters . And why would that be . Why is there such a difference between pluto and chiron . Pluto and chiron look very different and we have known that from the earth but we can see how dramatically different they are. These images to my eye show an younger surface on pluto and older and more battered on chiron. We can compare it to impact models and i hope we will be able to establish the ages of different surface units on pluto and chiron. As to why pluto looks younger is either its internal engine is running and the are active processes taking place or those atmosphere prophecies are of themselves covering up the geology. We will know that once we get the other data sets i mentioned because with those we can really read the whole story. It is ambiguous today for a couple reasons. One, we just got the data and second we dont have the supporting data sets to unravel the whole story. Stay tuned. Lets take a couple questions, chris media. Two questions that are reoccurring. What is going on . I am hearing a lot of buzz on there . Thank you. Appreciate it. As we go through and monitor of the fans online. First question is does any of the surface features on pluto suggest possible tetonics . I am not sure. That is an honest answer. I think we have to have time to work with the data and look at it carefully on a computer verses seeing it on the screen for a few seconds. We will have a chance to do that today. And by the time the experts take a look we can report back to you tomorrow for the first analysis. One more question chris. As nasa is always encouraging our youth to study s. T. E. M. This is coming from a younger man. From Jessica Lucas she tweets my nineyearold son wants to know how long it took to build spacecraft new horizons . It was built in the period of four years and two months including the design phase and construction and testing. The entire project from getting authority to proceed until the time we launched was four years and two months which by the way is pretty short for outer Planet Missions and Planetary Missions in general. We were under the gun to make the jupiter gravity assist launch window in early 2006 and we were able to do that and as a result we were able to make the encounter today. Had we not made that launch window we would have had to fly another four years and not encountered pluto until 2019. We were very well aware during the time we designed new horizons there was a big incentive to make that launch windows and the hopkins applied physic library team the Contractor Team those of us at southwest Research Responsible for payload development, i think everybody knew it was very important and a lot of people really sacrificed family time nights and wokeeekends and a lot of other people didnt think it could be done but this team managed to do it. They built that spacecraft and got it launched in that unbelievably short time but it worked flawlessly the whole nine and a half years. Let me take a few more and go ahead and wrap up. What is the maximum resolution you hope to get from the pictures you are taking in the permanently shadowed areas . That is a little bit of a difficult question to answer because it depends on some of the subtleties of the data analysis. For those who dont know what the question is about now the spacecraft is beyond pluto when it looks back at the planet it is seeing the night side and just the thin crescent of sunlit rays. But we arranged to have it fly by on a day where plutos largest moon chiron is on the other side and sunlight is reflecting off and aluminating the terrains. We look back with our cameras at the night side terrain aluminated by chiron light and we can see. We are looking back to the glare of the sun now and the sunlight creates various optical effects on the images that can make it difficult to see the details in them. The native resolution is pretty good. But because it is so dark the signal to noise is low. And we will have to actually add the pixels in a way to change the resolution until we can build up. How far we will have to degrade the resolution to get the good signal is difficult to predict because we have never turned the cameras back to look at the sun. We didnt want to risk that during the flight out to pluto. We have to see what the optical effects are and see how well we can produce the images. Kelly with giant telescope e. The scientist are worried about what little atmosphere pluto has might have frozen out and you were eager to get there. You mentioned the inspection data for frost of nitrogen and methane. Is it fair to say it snows on pluto . It sure looks that way. This is for alice, can you tell us about the data. Actually it held out since the last contact we had with it, and one of these things was out of our fault. We have a good measure of how the observations are going on board the spacecraft. Glen right with irish television. I was broadcasting and hope this question has been asked. Just a large scale picture we are looking at here i am seeing maybe five or six different terrains or regions on the broader scale. Is that roughly right . And the feature that appears to be slightly different on the left side and right side. I am wondering if that is an affect of the subsolar points or is there a difference within the heart feature . I would say we are seeing the same thing you are seeing, leo. A handful of individual broad surface units across this hemi hemisphere. We will be able to say more definitive things about that but i can i think you are making the right conclusion. Hi robert with back space. Can you describe what exactly you will see on the monitors tonight when the sign