Celebrate Victory at the Winter Solstice

 

I apologize for being late with this good news though most who follow the New Horizons mission have already heard it—specifically, we won! New Horizons will continue to be a planetary mission while also doing heliophysics in the distant Kuiper Belt. Its team will also continue to search for a third Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) for a close flyby.

This victory belongs to the New Horizons team and to more than 7,000 people who signed the online petition to keep New Horizons a planetary mission with the crew it has had since before its 2006 launch.

According to petition organizer Hoyt Davidson, “The New Horizons team believes our petition and the cover letter to NASA’s leaders really was the straw that broke this loose.”

For more on where the mission goes from here, visit https://www.nasa.gov/missions/new-horizons/nasas-new-horizons-to-continue-exploring-outer-solar-system/ .

When so many of us were fighting to keep the planetary mission, I suspected things would end this way but was afraid to be too hopeful.

While this win happened at the end of September, today, when we commemorate the Winter Solstice and look back at the past year, is an opportune time to celebrate this accomplishment.

For the latest on New Horizons, check out this blog post by principal investigator Alan Stern: https://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/PI-Perspectives.php?page=piPerspective_12_19_2023&fbclid=IwAR1d2x8GTgzxBoNG_XSS_GkMcgDd-_8QCGuq9PttzPx-4G5-4KVBToZNUrE

At its core, the Winter Solstice is about hope, about the promise of new light and new life on the longest, darkest night of the year. In ancient times, people would come together to light bonfires they kept burning all night to “strengthen” the Sun and help it return.

How different is that from people all over the world coming together to fight for New Horizons? This, after all, is how the mission was created and launched after multiple cancellations and numerous obstacles. People came together for a project in which they believed and refused to give up on it.

We have always had the power to create change, to make the world a better place, to bring light to the darkness.

In these days of extreme weather and climate disasters, we need to find that power within and come together to save the habitability of our world and to explore beyond it. May we embrace and express that power in 2024 and beyond.

“Darkness does wane though winter’s chill

The season reigns so bitter still

Fire’s bright seed is born anew

Small spark of light we sing to you!

Birthday of light we hail and cheer

Though short the days still cold and drear

Solstice has come, and with this morn

Our brother Sun has been reborn!”

~Rich Mertes, fourth grade teacher, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LazGbmTcJHw