I arrived at the Applied Physics Lab (APL) around the beginning of June, six weeks before the July 14 2015 Pluto flyby. Most of the science operations were in APL's 'Building 100,' which is a new building which houses APL's Space Department. It's across the street from the main APL campus in Laurel, MD.

A month before the Pluto encounter, Mark Showalter and Doug Hamilton look for dust in the Pluto system. They're part of the hazard team, and their job is to find anything that might be in the system which we don't know about -- either dust, or new satellites. The bright lines are diffraction spikes from Pluto and Charon.

This and the following hazard photos are by John Spencer -- I was at APL but I didn't yet have permission to bring my camera onto the lab!

At this point in the early encounter, we there were a few dozen people, and we were having plenary sessions in the upstairs conference room at APL. Many of these people were involved with the hazard search -- that is, searching for any dust and debris in the Pluto system that might threaten the spacecraft.

Clockwise from left: Will Grundy, Alan Stern, Cindy Conrad, Marc Buie, Tod Lauer, Bill McKinnon, Leslie Young, Joel Parker (?), David Kaufmann, Josh Kammer, Mike Summer, Jeff Moore, ___.

Photo by John Spencer.

Doug Hamilton, Marc Buie, and David Kaufmann all look for hazards.

Photo by John Spencer.

Searching for hazards is a 24-7 job for John Spencer. These are LORRI mosaics of the Pluto region.

Photo by John Spencer.

The hazards team spent a lot of time blinking back and forth between images, not unlike what Clyde Tombaugh did 80+ years ago to find Pluto in the first place. Here, Tod Lauer has taped a small square aperture on his screen to look for motion only in that region. Sometimes a pair of scissors will be faster and better than debugging a new IDL function!

Doug Hamilton, John Spencer, Tod Lauer.

Photo by John Spencer.

NH Hazard Team members David Kaufmann and Doug Hamilton find a novel way to search for debris in the Pluto system.

OpNav team? Bill Owen, Bobby Williams, Marina Brozovic?

Photo by John Spencer.

Randy Gladstone loves debugging SPICE code. Here he's in the atmospheres ('ATM') team room at APL. Note those laptop stickers -- all missions on which Randy's sent an Alice-family UV spectrometer. Time to get a bigger laptop!

Meahwile, as the hazard search is wrapping up, the science team is coming online. The composition team ('COMP') shows the first LEISA spectrum of Pluto!

LEISA = Linear Etalon Image Spectral Array -- New Horizons' infrared spectral imager.

Cathy Olkin, Kim Ennico, ___, Rick Binzel, Alex Parker, Cristina Dalle Ore, Dale Cruikshank.

The first NH LEISA spectrum of Pluto!

Marc Buie in the Geology & Geophysics ('GGI') team room -- formerly known as the Hazards room, until that team finished up their work. Here he's measuring Pluto radii -- a topic of great interest in the time leading up to the encounter, even though each day's results were superseded quickly.

Photo by John Spencer.

Maarten Versteeg, Mark Tapley, Cathy Olkin, and Kim Ennico in the payload room.

Kim Ennico, Cathy Olkin, Mark Tapley, and Maarten Versteeg in the Payload Engineering Cave.

New Horizons flies in the lobby of APL's building 200. (I took this at night illuminated with remote flashes, which did give the security guards some concern.)

Alan Stern shows of the Pluto (+ planets) article in National Geographic. But hang on -- that's not this month's cover story, but rather, it's August 1970! With Dale Cruikshank, Steven Maran, and Andy Chaikin.

By the time the mission was over, I think Pluto and New Horizons had made it on the cover of National Geographic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Time, and hundreds of other publications around the world.

Photo by John Spencer.

Carter Emmart and Michel Michal Marcinkowski work on flyby visualization. Carter puts together the shows at the American Museum of Natural History, and they were working on really cool interactive real-time flyby graphics.

Carter's mega-powered computer was a bit heavy to cart to APL every day, so they worked at the Sheraton.

Carter Emmart.

After talking with students, Carter Emmart is covered with questions.

We've received word that Styx (the band) is playing a show tomorrow night in Virginia. New Horizons has a special interest in Styx, because Pluto's smallest satellite, discovered in 2012, shares a name with the band.

Oliver White, Cristina Dalle Ore, Josh Kammer, and Paul Schenk head across the APL campus to find the band.

Styx-the-band visits APL! At front are Lawrence Gowan (keyboards), Tommy Shaw (guitar /voice), and Tod Sucherman (drums).

Styx's Tommy Shaw signs autographs for navigator Bobby Williams.

Tommy Shaw with the whole KinetX NH Navigation team (__, Coralie Jackman, Bobby Williams, __, Tommy Shaw, Derek __, __).

Navigator Bobby Williams shows off his Styx autographs.

"The center point on the plot is Pluto. Styx [the moon] is small enough that it doesn't work into our solution."

Tommy Shaw signs a portrait of the Pluto system, used for the recently concluded hazard search.

Mark Showalter -- discoverer of Styx the satellite -- with Lawrence, Tommy, and Tod of Styx the band.

Styx signs one of the recent images of the Pluto system, taken during the hazard search. We are hoping to find a giant guitar pick in space.

Styx's Todd Sucherman (Modern Drummer's 2009 Number One Rock Drummer in the World) discusses exploration of the Pluto system.

Styx's Todd Sucherman gives some stick tips to Joel Parker.

LEISA engineer Allen Lunsford goes over the New Horizons 1/8 scale (?) model with Styx's Lawrence Gowan. The room has nearly cleared out -- but Lawrence isn't leaving until he's ready to design his own.

The highlight of the daily 8 AM plenary science briefings: Pluto becomes sharper, and new features rotate into view. Angles are longitude, with Pluto on top and Charon below. And even here, you can see the heart of Sputnik Planum (unofficial) and the dark pole of Charon.

Writer Amy Shira Teitel works on a story with Cathy Olkin.

Amy Shira Teitel gets to know the Pluto system, upon which we reported regularly for her Pluto in a Minute broadcasts on YouTube.

And when not reporting on Pluto and New Horizons, what's she a fan of? "Definitely all that pre-Apollo history. The early rocket launches. Totally amazing."

Alissa Earle and Alex Parker look over early spectral data in the COMP team room.

Note that in order to promote more cross-instrumental work, the New Horizons science team was split into several categories organized by science theme, rather than by instrument.

Henry Throop and Amanda Zangari try one more time to get Pluto's pole position correct. That's GV on the screen, one of the tools that I wrote. I spent most of my time during the encounter up here in the COMP room.

Photo credit: Rick Binzel.

___, Ralph McNutt, and Matt Hill.

Bill Owen has navigated his way across virtually the entire solar system. On New Horizons, he's heading the Optical Navigation team ('OpNav') -- that is, determining the position of the spacecraft and the Pluto system using images taken in flight. This is complementary to the navigation by radio tracking that another part of the nav team is doing.

And our daily fill of new images, as a new side of Charon rotates into view.

Check out those Plutodoodles, which arrived in the COMP room addressed to Alex Parker. If you look closely, they do indeed have a patch of red tholin-type organic molecules running across their southern hemispheres...

Tod Lauer and Leslie Young in the hallways of APL. Tod Lauer is an extragalactic astronomer from NOAO, who'd never looked at anything as close as Pluto before coming out to APL. But he did amazing things with image processing: PSFs, stray light, image stacking, and making mosaics.

Cathy Olkin uses a plush NH model [built by who?] to work out a pointing geometry with Maarten Versteeg. We used things like this a lot -- rotating the physical object can be more insightful than a matrix transformation in IDL.

Leslie Young comes to visit the COMP team.

Rick Binzel, Alex Parker, Alisa Earle, Dale Cruikshank, Leslie Young.

Joel Parker and Mark Tapley finish up some wings, and discuss Mark's epic desert experience at That's Amore (RIP).

"So they brought out the dessert tray, and I looked at them all, and I ordered. It comes out, and apparently what they failed to tell me was that what I had seen was a 1/3rd scale model of the actual item.

Pretty soon there's money on the table daring me to finish it. And then someone else puts even more money on the table to have me not finish it..."

Heather Elliot watches carefully.

APL press officer Mike Buckley and Amy Shira Teitel.

Alice Bowman and her band!

Photo by John Spencer

Hal Weaver at the final NASA SHBOT decision review.

Photo by John Spencer.

And onward to Pluto it is! John Spencer presents at the final NASA decision review.

Alan and Glen write in a followup announcement to the team:

All: We are pleased to announce that the SHBOT analysis of all hazard data through P-18 have not found any new moons and the probability of loss of mission is unchanged at less than 0.01%. The Project recommended to NASA that the spacecraft continue on the nominal trajectory and sequence, and NOT execute a SHBOT TCM at the P-14 opportunity.

NASA has concurred with that recommendation.

On to PLUTO!

Photo credit: John Spencer

John Spencer and Mark Showalter headed up the New Horizons hazards team, and have spent the last several months searching for small rocks in the Pluto-Charon region. They told us they found nothing, but rumor has it they might have been hiding a few discoveries, shown here.

Go New Horizons! I ran into Alan as I came in.

With the Hazard search done, the Mission Ops is clear to send the final command load for the spacecraft -- that is, the actual sequence of observations which will execute at Pluto, which up until now have not been uplinked.

Alan: So Henry. I was up at 4:30 this morning. Had to go over to misson ops building.

Me: Was there an early meeting over there??

Alan: No, no. They were doing the command load.

Me: Oh, right. So it's all up? So, did you have to actually go over there? Like to supervise it?

Alan: No, I just wanted to. This is it. This is the command load. It's the mission. I mean, this is my baby. 4:30 in the morning, it was just me and two operators over there. They send the command. It's about 20 minutes, at 20 kilobits a second. It's like a train. It goes out... past Saturn, past Uranus, gets to the spacecraft. Then we do it again tomorrow, for side B.

Saturday afternoon, July 4. We've lost contact with the spacecraft. Earlier in the day Mission Ops was transmitting the final sequence for the Pluto encounter, and the spacecraft disappeared soon after. Several hours later Misson Ops locates it. It's come up in 'safe mode', (i.e., something has gone wrong), after a reboot.

Although many people had plans to go down to the National Mall for fireworks, I don't think anyone made it. John Spencer and Con Tsang are back at the Sheraton, with John on the emergency Anomaly Review Board (ARB) telecon.

Photo by John Spencer.

Three deputy project scientists and the engineers for the Anomaly Review Board, the day after losing contact.

Clockwise from left: Maarten Versteeg, Tommy Greathouse, Cathy Olkin, Kim Ennico, Mark Tapley, ___, Leslie Young.

July 5 is a holiday at APL, but we are all there. Hal (in his shorts) gives an update on the spacecraft's situation to the Atmospheres group (+ McKinnon) downstairs in the 'romper room' where the ATM team lives.

Hal Weaver and Kim Ennico will spend many of the next 48 hours without sleep. With Eric Schindhelm.

While Mission Ops is working the anomaly, the science team is still busy. While we don't have new data to analyze, there is still a lot to do.

Our daily updates slow down as we re-analyze data that is a few days old.

We lost several days of observations, but by July 8, we were getting images to the ground once again.

Comments from the public, frequently shared with the team. Every day, I felt so lucky to be part of this group.

Bonnie Buratti shows some new phase curve reductions in the Geology room. (That is, plots of brightness vs. angle, to study the roughness of the surfaces of Pluto and Charon.) Looks like that American flag she was holding was in use in GGI well before Alan handed them out to the team in prep for the flyby itself.

Photo by Stuart Robbins.

Tod Lauer and Amanda Zangari. And yes, that's NH flying behind them!

Kelsi Singer hugs her third-favorite satellite.

Photo by Stuart Robbins.

Alice Bowman and Karl Whittenburg, sporting some really nice cheeshead-styled New Horizons hats.

Fran Bagenal (U. Colorado) wants to go to Pluto!!

Will Grundy and Dennis Reuter discuss LEISA observations.

Fran Bagenal confides that she has never actually seen a magnetic field.

Carly:

Hey! Does anyone know why my IDL code is acting so weird? It's the strangest thing. I have two variables, A and B. They are independent. Now, let's set A=0, and look at the value of B. It's zero. And if we set A=20, and check B, then it's also 20. WTF?

So we figured it out. It was slightly tricky, but it didn't involve any obscure language elements, nothing cryptic. I will give my prize money to anyone who can solve this IDL Challenge!

In the payload room, the instrument engineers watch the status page for NASA's Deep Space Network, showing which antenna is communicating with which spacecraft. On the left side of the display you can see the three large 70-meter dishes, with nine smaller dishes to the right (mostly 34 meter).

Check it out: NASA DSN Status Page.

Alex Parker shares the music we use to gently wake the spacecraft from sleep every morning.

David Aguilar gives us his daily update on the press: who's covered us, and what are they talking about.

"I quit my job at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics to come do this with New Horizons. I loved it there, but it wasn't hard -- I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance."

Steve Maran edits a story, with Will Grundy and Alan Stern. Steve was one of the team's 'embedded' journalists. Rather than just coming in at the flyby and the press conferences, he and about six others were along for the whole encounter ride, working alongside the science team and writing stories in the many weeks leading up to encounter.

In the GGI room, Amanda Zangari and Veronical Bray have a plan for that Playbook.

Photo by Stuart Robbins.

Fran Bagenal, with Tom Krimigis.

Will Grundy shows off some tholin residue that Dale Cruikshank made in the lab and may or may not have left on Will's computer, as a candidate for Pluto surface composition.

Tom Krimigis.

Back in the COMP room, Carly Howett is stoked. Boulder has a lot of great food, but one thing they are definitely missing is Dunkin' Donuts, something the DC area has no shortage of...

Rick Binzel focuses.

Curt Niebur (New Frontiers Program Manager at NASA HQ) comes by for a visit, with Alan Lunsford, Jason Cook, Dennis Reuter, and Will Grundy.

In the GGI room, everyone loves Pluto.

Mark Showalter searches for satellites.

Appropriate fortune cookie message from dinner.

Photo taken by (and cookie eaten by) John Spencer.

Big news on the spectral front! LEISA now sees nitrogen ice.

Amanda Zangari makes the case for rotational curves.

Hal Weaver and Kelsi Singer, with Cindy Conrad in the background.

Cindy Conrad and Michael Soluri.

Heather Elliott and Jon Vandergriff.

Jon Vandergriff and Matt Hill (?).

Ted Stryk and Maria Banks in front of the APL meeting room.

Besides being scientific bouncers at the Pluto encounter, Ted is a philosphy professor and image processor. And Maria? She's a Mars scientist, but plays her harp on Broadway as much as she can.

"I'm doing the Fantasticks now. There are enough breaks in it that I can usually review a paper or two during the down time. Before that, I was playing on cruise ships. I did three trips on the QE2. They have a Harp Room right up top of the whole ship. Harp and champagne. It's great."

No wonder the GGI team room is where everyone else heads for snacks. Though that can of Spam looks surprisingly untouched...

Photo by John Spencer.

Alan Lunsford, Joe Peterson, and Eddie Weigle share denials of responsibility. In front of them is one of the 'playbooks', the human-readable spacecraft observing schedule.

Laurie Cantillo and Alan Stern strategize on media materials.

A calendar lists downlink times, and a few early ideas for public images releases (Pluto at different aspects, Colorized versions, Last system view, Last full view of Pluto + Charon, When will LEISA have anything to say?, etc.)

In the COMP room, trajectory designer Yan Ping Guo, with Carly Howett and Will Grundy.

We've been able to detect all six bodies in the Pluto system since late April 2015, Now we're close enough that Hydra has been resolved! That's an equation there: Hydra Before - Stellar PSF = Remainder, and the donut shows that Hydra is more than a pixel.

Check it out! On the wall in APL Building 100 is a map of the solar system, showing where all of APL's spacecraft are at the current time. Every so often, those positions need updating. Here, ___ uses a pocket-knife to move the New Horizons sticker on its path.

Far off in space, Emily Lakdawalla's crocheted New Horizons spies an icy planet. What is this planet made of? Cotton? Nylon thread? Or something even more mysterious?

Oh yes! Flux calibration. Where did that extra factor of pi go? Silvia Protopapa starts with the basics, as we all do.

Joe Peterson and Amy Teitel talk it up in the back row. Note the TODAY sign on the timeline on the wall -- we are at P - 4 days.

Mark Showalter, Joel Parker, John Spencer, and Tod Lauer all check out that latest Pluto image.

Hal Weaver leads the morning session.

Leslie Young and Dale Cruikshank.

Darrel Strobel at the morning plenary.

Amanda Zangari dreams of a world with only a right-handed coordinate system.

"But in space, there is no up and down!"

Bill McKinnon struggles to adapt to Pluto's new right-handed coordinate system.

Fran Bagenal with Tommy Greathouse.

Dale Cruikshank shows off those autographs he collected at the time of publication of [an early book on the Pluto system -- what is it?]

Check it out: Patrick Moore, Jim Christy, Charlene Christy, Clyde Tombaugh, Brad Smith, Fred Whipple, and many other famous luminaries of the outer solar system.

And in the COMP room, we have the first spatially resolved spectrum of Pluto! Returned by LEISA.

Leslie Young, Ann Verbiscer, Silvia Protopapa, Alisa Earle, Cristina Dalle Ore, Rick Binzel, Jason Cook, Kim Ennico, Cathy Olkin, Carly Howett

And in the COMP room, we have the first spatially resolved spectrum of Pluto! Returned by LEISA.

Leslie Young, Alisa Earle, Silvia Protopapa, Cristina Dalle Ore, Rick Binzel, Kim Ennico, Carly Howett, Jason Cook, Cathy Olkin.

Photo by Dale Cruikshank.

And in the COMP room, we have the first spatially resolved spectrum of Pluto! Returned by LEISA.

Ann Verbiscer, Leslie Young, Alisa Earle, Silvia Protopapa, Cristina Dalle Ore, Rick Binzel, Jason Cook, Kim Ennico, Carly Howett, Cathy Olkin.

Jason Cook, Cristina Dalle Ore, and Silvia Protopapa have developed three parallel data pipelines to analyze the new Pluto spectrum. And all of them find the same features, as seen on the three displays.

Alissa Earle, Rick Binzel, Cristina Dalle Ore, Dale Cruikshank, and Anne Verbiscer all talk with Will Grundy and Joel Parker.

Jason Cook, Cathy Olkin, and Dennis Reuter check out a new spectrum.

Rick Binzel, Jason Cook, Cathy Olkin, and Dennis Reuter check out a new spectrum.

Joe Peterson, Alan Lunsford, and Eddie Weigle.

Cathy Olkin and Eddie Weigle discuss the downlink schedule, playbook in hand. (That first column MET is Mission-Elapsed Time, which counts roughly the number of seconds since launch in January, 2006.)

Michael Soluri shoots a portrait of the women on the team. The NH team was about 25% women -- including 3 of 4 Deputy PI's, the Mission Ops Manager, most of the sequencers, and Co-I's and science team members throughout.

• Atlantic Monthly: The Women Who Rule Pluto
• NASA: The Women Who Power NASA's New Horizons Mission to Pluto

Photo by Con Tsang.

Con and his friend dream of colder places. Five months later, they'll both be on their way to Antarctica.

In the early morning, Tod Lauer has things to show, EVERY DAY!

Don Jennings, Kelsi Singer, Jeff Moore, Mark Showalter, Casey Lisse, Stuart Robbins, Tod Lauer, John Spencer, Curt Niebur, Paul Schenk, Michael Soluri (foreground), Ted Stryk (background).

Yes, Alan gets to see the new images too...

Alan Stern, Jeff Moore, Tod Lauer, John Spencer.

Alan with the famous New Horizons pencils...

Jim Green and a New Horizons pencil.

Veronica Bray loves Pluto.

Simon Porter.

Mark Showalter.

Joel Parker and Randy Gladstone are transfixed by some great data.

In the media room: Andy Chaiken and David Aguilar work on an article.

Andy Chaikin.

WE ARE ALMOST TO PLUTO!!!!! 3000+ days down, two to go, says Bill McKinnon, sporting a classic 1989-era T-shirt.

Navigation notes! This is far from a paperless mission.

Summary of latest Pluto/Charon radius estimates, morning plenary, P - 2 days.

Pluto remains King of the Kuiper Belt!

Latest image for today! We are getting closer and closer! These are essentially the best images of the backside of Pluto that we'll get -- the flyby is on the opposite side.

Amy Shira Teitel would love to go to the moon.

In an unusual moment in the middle of the day, Alan has the APL lobby all to himself.

John Spencer in the GGI team room.

Carly Howett focuses on a spectrum with Will Grundy.

The COMP room is getting full!

Paul Schenk shows off something awesome in the GGI room.

Kelsi Singer, Simon Porter, Jeff Moore, Oliver White, Stuart Robbins, Orkan Umurhan, Rick Binzel, Paul Schenk, Bill McKinnon, Kirby Runyon, Ross Beyer, Alan Howard, Veronica Bray.

Photo by John Spencer.

Con Tsang floats comfortably at 31 AU.

Tommy Greathouse and Marteen Versteeg show off the first Alice spectrum! The instrument has been flying for 9.5 years, and it is only today -- two days out from Pluto -- that we are finally close enough to get a real spectrum! (But hey, that's still two days before REX will be able to detect Pluto...)

New Horizons is powered by high-quality snacking.

This photo makes me think of a conversation I had with Michael Soluri:

"One of my favorite photos from shooting the Hubble repair project was a bag of Cheetohs in the copy room. There was a fax machine, and coming out of that was a copy of the final instructions for John Grunsfeld's spacewalk, for replacing one of the handles on HST. I always try to get the food."

"July 13, 2015... P-1 Day!!!!!!!" With Rick Binzel and Alissa Earle.

Jim Green comes by from NASA HQ to check in on us, and we thank him. With the encounter close at hand, everyone now is donning their mission shirts.

Andy Cheng is surprised at something!

One thing we love is watching slides in the dark.

Ann Harch has sequenced spacecraft across the solar system, including helping to land APL's NEAR mission on an asteroid.

Nicole Martin gets going early on the flag-waving!

John Andrews.

Mihaly Horanyi, PI of the Student Dust Detector, is no longer a student.

Ivan Linscott and Mike Bird on the REX team.

Orkan Umurhan shows off some tholin samples Dale Cruikshank (?) has made in the lab. They really do look red, just like Pluto!

A lot of organic molecules are found toward Pluto's south pole. GGI attemps to set up a realistic model, though the apricots are a poor spectral match.

The GGI team remains remarkably well fed.

The GGI room did a great job shopping for snacks , and we all raided their stashes.

'Non-mouldy bagels,' though? That's a lot to ask.

Members of the NH media team watch Glen Fountain during the encounter briefing in the APL media room.

Based on the decorations on the wall ("Europa Clipper System Integration and Test", "Europa Clipper!", "Europa Clipper!"), I think someone at APL is planning on going to Europa soon.

Midway through the encounter, APL was selected to build major portions of Europa Clipper in collaboration with JPL - come back in the mid-late-2020's for another encounter!

NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman comes by for a visit with her favorite planet.

From left: Alex Parker, Carly Howett, Alissa Earle, Cathy Olkin, Jason Cook, Dava Newman, Silvia Protopapa, Rick Binzel, Kim Ennico.

Alan has his first look at the newly processed enhanced color image of Pluto.

From left: Cristina Dalle-Ore, Jason Cook, Silvia Protopapa, Cathy Olkin, Con Tsang, Marc Buie, Carly Howett, David Kaufmann, Will Grundy, Alan Lunsford, Alisa Earle, Alan Stern, Doug Hamilton, Rick Binzel, Anne Verbiscer.

Alan has his first look at the newly processed enhanced color image of Pluto.

Check out those new color images -- Pluto on the left, Charon on the right. (Those colors look more extreme than the ones we ended up using.)

Dennis Reuter, Will Grundy, and Dale Cruikshank wordsmith over a press release on that color MVIC map. The draft reads "Pluto, Charon Shine in Exaggerated Color", which was changed to "false color" by the time it made it into the (real release) on the day of the flyby. "But the colors aren't false -- they're at the right wavelengths, just exaggerated!"

Meanwhile, in the middle of the night and just hours before closest-approach, Alex Parker, Tod Lauer, Carly Howett, and Simon Porter are working on a top-secret mission as they assemble and process the P_LORRI_FULLFRAME image for release in the morning.

Photo by John Spencer.

5:30 AM on encounter morning. Members of the Student Dust Collector team head are among the first to leave the Columbia Sheraton where most of the science team is staying, followed by 100+ more behind them, as we all head over to APL. That's Mihaly Horanyi, Marcus Piquette, and Jamey Szalay. And that's the crew from Discovery TV filming them.

The Discovery people were great -- they were one of the few who was there throughout the encounter, not just at the flyby. Their secret? Put in the time! As they told me post-flyby, while waiting at Building 100:

"We are like Court TV. We just hang out here and wait for the people to come by. Then we corner them, seduce them into an interview. It's a lot of waiting."

It's early morning at APL -- just the street cleaner. OK, plus a handful of scientists and engineers who have been there all night...

Showing up for encounter morning! Coming in are Alan Stern and Bonnie Burattie, with Karl Wittenburg (?), Joel Parker, and Cindy Conrad.

Silvia Protopapa and Cathy Olkin.

I don't know who this new guy is, but he looks like a real space geek.

(OK, it's John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator, NASA HQ -- plus five-time shuttle astronaut, payload commander for multiple Hubble servicing missions, NASA Chief Scientist, etc.)

Yan Ping Guo.

5:59 AM July 14. Carly and Alex have been up during the night on their top-secret assignment having something to do with preparing the image to be released in just a few minutes. Alex hits 'send'...

And it goes out...

... where Hal is waiting on the other end.

And we have the Pluto color global image! This is a composite from a low-res color frame from MVIC, with high-res panchromatic from LORRI. Resolutoin is roughly 2 km/pixel. We will get much higher resolution images, but this is the best single global image, and it was sent down as soon as possible.

And we see Pluto, close-up, for the first time!

It's Pluto!!!

Looking at that global P_LORRI_FULLFRAME image.

Andy Chaikin and others look at the global image. Note the TV crew here -- usually the science team area at APL Building 100 was closed off to the media, but this global image was one of the exceptions.

Let's dim those lights for some extra drama...

And a round of applause for Alan from the whole team...

Kim Ennico and Carly Howett look relieved.

Thanks to Alan, from Tom Krimigis ('Aww...')

And from John Grunsfeld.

And now the geologists can start doing their job!

They've been waiting 9.5 years to do some geology on this planet!

And it has cracks, vast plains, mountains... but where are those craters??

Oliver White, Josh Kammer, Veronica Bray, Bonnie Buratti, and Max Mutchler.

That's Paul Schenk in profile at center, and Michael Soluri shooting with the iPhone.

Hal Weaver's reaction upon seeing the Pluto global image, as quoted in Science:

"It's fucking unbelieveable."

To which Hal explains...

"You know, I very rarely swear. And to my knowledge, Science has never quoted anybody swearing like that -- I mean, they'll edit it out. So I don't remember saying it, but if they quoted me like that, I'm sure I said it."

Cathy Olkin is amongst the first to visit Sputnik Planitia.

Rick Binzel takes in that color image, from which the global view was constructed. As the caption says, it's 'exaggerated color' -- true color, but stretched.

And now it's time to walk over to the other building. We'll spend the day at the Kosiakoff Center, where the media and visiting guests are based.

Paul Schenk, Amanda Zangari, Kelsi Singer, Leslie Young, Ross Beyer, Ted Stryk, Andrew Steffl, Joel Parker.

Orkan Umurhan celebrates the big day with some fine Turkish baklava, as we walk over to the Kosiakoff Center. That's Alan Howard next to him.

Dennis Reuter walks past APL's geese. Black and white never goes out of style!

The sign outside the Kosiakoff Center on flyby day. And that's Building 100 off to the left.

Joel Parker goes over details before an interview outside APL's Kosiakoff Center. There are close to 200 media teams at APL for the encounter. [Check the #.]

T-17 minutes until New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, which happens at 7:49 AM ET (+- a handful of seconds -- a revised C/A time will be determined post-flyby, once we can measure Pluto's position to high accuracy).

We're in the Kosiakoff Center waiting. Alan Stern is on stage, Dwayne Brown is on the TV, and the family of Clyde Tombaugh are queued to come up next. It's certainly a media circus over here... hundreds of reporters and TV crews, in addition to the friends, family, and VIPs.

And it's closest-approach time!

Nothing actually happens at this point -- we had a countdown and a cheer, but there is not a confirmation signal expected, and there's no one particular observation that can only happen then, or anything like that. This is a symbolic moment, and dress rehearsal for the very tense moment coming up in about 13 hours, when we actually hope to receive a signal from the spacecraft.

Marc Buie has given an intense number of interviews. (And check out that hat too -- those were given out at launch in 2009.)

Olliver White, Kelsi Singer, and Veronica Bray. I thought I had a picture showing Paul Schenk as well, but I can't seem to find that one.

Go Pluto go!

This is definitely the place to be.

Con Tsang, Jason Cook, Erik Schindhelm.

And there's our engineers! ___, ___, ___, Becca (?), Michael Vincent.

Note the special 'Skiing on Pluto' badges. These didn't actually let us into anything official, but Ann Harch made them up for everyone, and they were awesome. (Find a closeup?)

Fran Bagenal and John Spencer find a little bit of quiet in the media room. Until I pull John away to answer a question about geological activity that I can't answer for a reporter myself...

NB: Note Fran sporting that fancy Pluto-Charon pin courtesty of Kate McKinnon, and her cool ungulate, courtesy of the Laughing Goat.

It's Jim Christy (discoverer of Charon) and Charlene Christy (namesake of the moon)! I talked with Jim for quite awhile. And Charlene and I go back a long time: at the Pluto launch in 2006, Leslie Young took the opportunity to decorate my head like a surface map of Pluto, using the best-available data at the time. In one of the highlight of my scientific career, I talked Charlene into orbiting me. here and here.

Alan's family is out in full force.

We spend the day doing interviews, watching press events, meeting the visitors at the Kosiakoff center, and so forth. The spacecraft is observing all day and is too busy to talk to us, except for...

Part of the NH Geology science team after the 'phone home' signal is received. That's NASA SMD spokesperson Dwayne Brown in front, with Simon Porter, Con Tsang, Veronica Bray, Ted Stryk, Maria Banks, Amanda Zangari, ___, and Francis Nimmo.

Carly Howett hears the 'phone home' signal.

Check out NASA SMD spokesperson Dwayne Brown during the 'phone home' signal reception.

For the 'phone home' signal, the crew at the Missions Ops center contained was just the critical engineers, with the PI and NASA administrators close at hand. Once it's sent the 'phone home' signal, the spacecraft goes back to observing, and the crew from missions ops is shuttled over to the Kosiakoff Center.

That's Ralph Semmel, Charlie Bolden, John Grunsfeld, Glen Fountain, Alan Stern, Alice Bowman (hidden), ____, Jim Green, Cindy Conrad.

Mission controllers and engineers from Mission Ops file into the Kosiakoff Center to much applause.

All the engineers and flight controllers that have made it possible! Speaking is APL director Ralph Semmel..[

I thought it was super-cool to have all of the engineers up there. The science team gets a lot of attention from the media (in interviews and articles, plus all the science results down the road), but the engineers don't usually get as much.

That's NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at the podium ('... and no, I'm not going to tell you how I broke my arm').

John Grunsfeld, Alan Stern, Alice Bowman, and Glen Fountain wave those flags at the Kosiakoff Center, post-flyby.

My daughter Piper (age 12) is away at camp in West Virginia, where no phones are allowed. But she of course knows exactly what is supposed to happen today, and needs to find out how it went! Somehow she gets permission from her counselors for a one-time exception, and calls me to see how New Horizons is doing.

Back at the hotel, after the celebrations are winding down.

Alan: "Just one more thing to do, OK? That contingency plan? Burn it."

The next morning, it's 7:30 AM, the data are streaming down, and we're back in full force. The GGI team is trying to analyze some images, but no one agrees on which way Pluto's pole is pointing. (In fact, has there ever been a photo with a more confused looking group of scientists?) That's Ross Beyer in the center.

Amanda Zangari, Paul Schenk, Mark Showalter, Simon Porter, Francis Nimmo, Veronica Bray, Max Mutchler, Bill McKinnon, Ross Beyer, Oliver White, Con Tsang, Kirby Runyon, Bonnie Buratti, ____, Maria Banks, Kelsi Singer.

Photo by Stuart Robbins.

Check out that Alice occultation light curve being shown by Alan in the media room! This data was taken just after close-approach, as Pluto passed in front of the Sun. The next morning, a subset of the data is on the ground, for use in studying the atmospheric structure.

Photo by John Spencer.

Con Tsang and Carly Howett look at some MVIC data.

APL's Ed White (?? - not right) films in the COMP room.

Photographer Michael Soluri. Michael has photographed NASA missions before -- he has a great book of very personal photos from the astronauts of the Hubble servicing mission. He has been following New Horizons since before launch -- coming to team meetings, and photographing NH as it was under construction. His photos are always from the human side -- not a cold piece of hardware, but all the emotions and personalities that go into it. As the manager for another project put it to him:

"Michael, we launch in 18 months. We have tons of photos of the hardware. But our team is getting older and older, and we have no photos at all of the people. Can we hire you to come and do that?"

In the Atmospheres room, Michael Soluri documents as Randy Gladstone and ___ show an Alice spectrum to science writer Ron Cowan.

Michael Soluri has been documenting the team since the launch.

Michael Summer in the Atmospheres room.

Tommy Greathouse, Andrew Steffl, and Kurt Retherford watch Eric Schindhelm examines some Alice occultation data.

Leslie Young exclaims! But I would too: she has spent her career chasing Pluto as it occults tiny 16th magnitude stars. And now, her spacecraft has watched Pluto occult THE SUN?!

Leslie Young, Tommy Greathouse, Michael Summers, and Josh Kammer in the ATM room.

Let's look at some solar occultation data!

Michael Soluri.

Michael Soluri, shooting in the Atmospheres room.

Henry Throop Photo copyright Michael Soluri.

A bit of a boost is sometimes needed. The cafeteria in Building 100 was also arranged to be open late and with cots for sleeping. I didn't see them used very much though -- too much to do!

About to show the first close-up pictures of Pluto and Charon! Dwayne Brown, Alan Stern, Will Grundy, Cathy Olkin, and John Spencer at the P+1d press conference at the APL Kosiakoff Center.

If you're going to watch just one movie about Pluto, this is the one to watch. Everything we thought we knew about Pluto has changed in the last 24 hours. All of our models are wrong, and that's why they're all smiling.

At the P+1d press conference, Charlene Christy takes a shot of the first image of her namesake moon, Charon! And that's discoverer Jim Christy next to her. "I'm going to send this right now to my grandkids," she told me.

At the P+1d press conference, the family of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh see the first close-up images of Pluto. That's Al Tombaugh in the middle, son of Clyde, with Cherylee Tombaugh to his left. [Annette Tombaugh?]

Sarah, Jordan, and Carole Stern see what Alan's been up to for the past 9+ years.

NASA HQ photographer Bill Ingalls has one of the world's coolest jobs.

"There they are!" Mark and __ from the Discovery TV Canada see the Tombaughs in the audience.

APL outreach coordinator Kerri Beiser is ready for action during the press conference.

Jim Christy.

John Grunsfeld takes questions from a reporter.

Al Tombaugh heckles Jim Christy a bit.

And it's the whole Christy-Tombaugh contingent! From left, it's Jim Christy, Charlene Christy, Annette Tombaugh (?), ___, ___, Al Tombaugh, Cherylee Tombaugh, __.

Geoff Brown and Kristi Marren in the media room at APL.

___ and ___ in the APL media center. You can tell what the most-asked questions are!

Dwayne Brown briefs his team in the media center.

I spend a couple of hours in the media center answering reporter questions, before heading upstairs to respond to tweets on the NASA Twitter feed.

During the pre-encounter part of the mission I was also busy with reporter inquiries -- among other places, from India, Bangladesh, Uruguay, and Bulgaria.

One of our iconic image pairs -- Pluto in true-color and exaggerated color. With Alissa Earle, Don Jennings, Cristina Dalle Ore, Cathy Olkin, Silvia Protopapa, Jason Cook, Carly Howett, Rick Binzel, Kim Ennico, Will Grundy, Alan Stern, Doug Hamilton, Dennis Reuter, Dale Cruikshank.

Photo credit: Dale Cruikshank.

At dinner with the REX team, Michael Vincent is appreciative and emotional. "I am so grateful to all of you for letting me be a part of this. This is my Super Bowl. But dammit... this one matters!!"

Rick Binzel, Jane Spencer, and Geoff Moore, post-flyby.

Guess which New Horizons team members have July 14 birthdays? That's Heather Elliott and Mark Tapley outside the Sheraton, with candles and a beaded New Horizons spacecraft model I had made up by some South African street artists.

REX PI Ivan Linscott listens hard to pick up a signal from Nadia Drake.

Science writer Nadia Drake is going to need a bigger antenna. "I write about two things: astronomy, and spiders. Australia has some great spiders: very toxic, very venomous."

Nadia's excellent article about using the SOFIA telescope (inside a 747) to chase a Pluto occultation was given the Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award in 2016.

And in the morning at P+2d, looking at the latest images in the science plenary at APL.

Holy moly! NH Press Officer David Aguilar shows that NYT front-cover closeup with a huge image of those new Pluto mountains. Internally, we'd been calling these observations the 'New York Times sequence,' but we didn't imagined that it would actually happen like this.

Steve Maran shows off that NYT cover story! Steve is a science writer and retired astronomer, who was brought on as an embedded reporter within the NH team.

In the media room, Randy Gladstone pitches a story.

Around the table clockwise from lower left: Amy Shira Teitel, Mike Buckley, Laurie Cantillo, Alan Stern, __, Jeff Moore, __, Cindy Conrad, Alex Parker (shades), David Aguilar, Andy Chaiken, __, Randy Gladstone, and Ron Cowen.

Room 100 is packed for the morning plenaries, but after that, all the big teams go off to their own rooms for the day. Michael Bird, working for REX, gets a bit of peace downstairs.

Project Manager Glen Fountain talks at a post-flyby reception at the Kosiakoff Center.

Alan: "Yeah, those stickers you've all had on yours cars -- the ones that said 'My other vehicle is on it way to Pluto'? We're going to have to replace those..."

"And in the front row, we have a new team member. You might know him from his work on the zodiacal dust, or... well, please welcome, Brian May!"

Alan Stern, Brian May, Hal Weaver.

Brian May took a couple of years off from academia to play in a band, but eventually returned and finished his PhD in astrophysics at Imperial College London in 2007.

Alice Bowman adores Brian! With mission ops crew: __, Ann Harch, Helen Hart, __, Brian May, Alice Bowman, Jon Vandergriff, Hong ___.

Brian May has spent the last several years building and selling very analogue stereographic viewers, and making images to view. This is the surface of Iapetus, in 3D, from Cassini data. He also made one up of Pluto itself, based on new images, which was pretty great -- he hadn't printed it, but we could see it on the screen. Check out the London Stereographic Company to get your own!

Brian May and Don Jennings.

Brian May and Don Jennings.

Leslie Young: "Oh my god! I've been out-geeked by a rock star!"

What's she looking at? A stereogram of Pluto, based two-day-old data, that Brian has put together on the plane on the way over here. "I haven't printed it out yet, but you can see it on the screen."

Brian May, with Oliver White, Ann Verbiscer, Paul Schenk, and Kirby Runyon in the geology room.

Brian May.

Looking at new Nix / Hydra images with Brian May.

From left: Veronica Bray, Brian May, Bill McKinnon, Casey Lisse, Mark Showalter, Stuart Robbins, Leslie Young, Simon Porter (center), Amanda Zangari, Con Tsang, John Spencer, Oliver White.

Looking at Hydra as it's returned to the ground!

From left: Michael Soluri, Brian May, Ross Beyer, Francis Nimmo, Bill McKinnon, Casey Lisse, Mark Showalter, Stuart Robbins, Kirby Runyon, Simon Porter, Leslie Young, Andy Cheng, Amanda Zangari, Con Tsang, John Spencer, Andy Chaikin.

Mark Showalter with his many terabytes of disk which he's brought out from SETI. The entire Pluto flyby returned something like 6 GB of LORRI data (check this), all of which could fit on his wristwatch.

Bonnie Buratti

Marcus Piquette, Jamey Szalay, and Heather Elliott outside APL Building 100. APL isn't surrounded by a ton of restaurants, but at least today, we had a nice food truck.

Jamey: "What's my role on the mission? You know the Student Dust Counter? I'm the student."

Paul Schenk with those Pluto mountains.

Paul Schenk, with Eric Schindhelm, Kelsi Singer, and the LEGO! Yes, you can build your own!

And speaking of LEGO, check out that one-off set featuring Alice Bowman, Leslie Young, Cathy Olkin, and Kim Ennico-Smith, as well as the final to-be-manufactured Women of NASA set.

Jeff Moore and Paul Schenk are going to need a bigger wall!

Photo by Con Tsang.

"Hey -- someone's writing an article about the youth of the New Horizons team... can you shoot a photo?"

So, representing today's youth, we have in front of the entrance to building 100, Jamey Szalay, Marcus Piquette, Carly Howett, ___, Kelsi Singer, and Alex Parker.

Photographer Kyle Cassidy came by and shot some fantastic portraits of the New Horizons team for Slate. Here he's with Kelsi Singer.

From Kyle's blog entry:

"My Leica was a point of continual interest among the scientists and engineers. One asked if I built it. The optics team discussed, at great length, how modern lenses are built to disperse less light in the rear optics of because of the digital sensors."

It's the British infiltration! Oliver White, John Spencer, Con Tsang, Carly Howett, Veronica Bray. (Fran: "Bloody hell I'm not going to pose for that photo!") Though they're all working for NASA and not the Brits now, so I guess we've won this round...

Chris Hersman makes sure the spacecraft is rotationally balanced for transport.

Gabe Rogers and Chris Hersman, with New Horizons. (And that's MESSENGER just to the right, which successfully crashed into Mercury in 2015.)

Silvia Protopapa.

Silvia Protopapa.

"My license? Yes, I just got it! I ... well, I failed the first time. I can drive just fine in my home country. But here, I did the test, and they failed me. They said I didn't stop at the stop sign. And no, of course I didn't stop there! There weren't any people, so why would I stop? It's just what we do in Italy!"

Rayna Tedford and Cindy Conrad run everything! From ordering lunches, to getting us through APL's security, to hotel arrangement, to giving us rides, to making cups and t-shirts. And yes, note the guide to seafood there -- Cindy always knows where to find the best Maryland crabs.

The PlutoPalooza was a huge public outreach event held at APL the weekend after the encounter. The Kosiakoff Center was open to the public, and several thousand DC/MD/VA came by, many with families and kids. Amanda Zangari checks out that spacecraft model.

Yan Ping Guo designed our trajectories and figured out how to get us to Pluto.

One of her neighbors visited and was in awe to find out what she actually did for a living.

"So you designed the trajectory so that... not only does it go past Pluto, and Charon, but you also go right through Pluto's shadow from the Sun, and then the Earth also goes behind Pluto too, and... HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT?"

Laurie Cantillo at NASA HQ managed a lot of our media relations. It was incredilbe to see the media group in action -- we had hundreds of reporters and thousands of articles.

Orkan Umuhar.

Geoffrey Hanes-Stiles (producer of the original Cosmos series), in the APL kitchen with Orkan Umuhar.

"So I was with Carl [Sagan], and a photographer was there. And Carl said, oh, I'm eating some pizza here, don't take a photo, come on man! And he said, no, that's exactly why I'm taking a photo. We take a photo precisely of the time you're doing nothing but eating pizza. Because who else is going to do that? We have enough photos of you in your lab."

Only the coolest kids get New Horizons tattoos!

Kerri Beisser with her group of New-Horizons educated teachers.

Fran Bagenal and her Pluto teacher-in-training.

Just a bit of well-wishing from the public at the PlutoPalooza.

Con Tsang and Amy Teitel look over some of my images.

Paul Schenk and David ___ finish off the encounter with a few renewed wedding vows, celebrated under a looped movie of spacecraft launches in the APL Building 100 lobby.#P + 16 days

New Horizons team outside Building 100. This was just after Ed White shot the team 'Thank You' shot from APL's cherry picker. Michael Soluri advised me 'I'm going to be in New York, but you should get a nice group shot. Make it back-lit -- shoot right into the sun.'

So I grabbed everybody as they were trying to run back to their offices from being outside for long enough already. "You have two minutes," said Alan.

This was a panorama of about 30 shots, stitched together. And that's Ed White on the left, also shooting the whole group at the same time.

The photographers! Clockwise from 7 o'clock: John Spencer, Con Tsang, Stuart Robbins, Dale Cruikshank, and Henry Throop. And thank you to Peter Bedini, Andy Calloway, and Mike Buckley at APL, John Spencer for organizing us, Alan Stern for supporting it.