The Pluto Perspective

Posted on January 21, 2021

The Pluto Perspective: A Launch to Remember

From Webcast Images to the Imaging Team

Kirby Runyon

New Horizons Geology and Geophysics Investigation Team Affiliate

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

I watched New Horizons launch live on a NASA TV webcast. I was a sophomore physics major at Houghton College, and I gathered some of my fellow physics majors around to watch New Horizons leave Earth from our student office in the science building. I couldn't have known that eight years later I would be a graduate student on the Geology and Geophysics Imaging team for New Horizons.

Kirby Runyon in 2006, the year New Horizons departed Earth for Pluto, Charon, Arrokoth, and the Kuiper Belt. (Credit: Kirby Runyon)

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