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After NASA's Successful Pluto Flyby, Scientists Await New Data03:48
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July 15, 2015

NASA and project staff react with others as telemetry is received from the New Horizons probe at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland on July 14, 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

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After almost a decade in space, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has successfully completed the first-ever flyby of Pluto.

Eager scientists and space enthusiasts erupted with joy just after 9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday when the probe beamed its status back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. Now comes a stream of images and new data about the dwarf planet and its moons.

Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson speaks with NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel.

New Horizons has obtained impressive new images of Pluto and its large moon Charon that highlight their compositional diversity. These are not actual color images of Pluto and Charon—they are shown here in exaggerated colors that make it easy to note the differences in surface material and features on each planetary body. The images were obtained using three of the color filters of the “Ralph” instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT. (NASA/APL/SwRI)

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Geoff Brumfiel, science correspondent for NPR. He tweets at @gbrumfiel.

This segment aired on July 15, 2015.

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