HUTCHINSON, Kan. — It has been traveling through our solar system for 11 years and, Wednesday, the Cosmosphere will have mission specialists on-hand to celebrate the New Horizons space mission and its close-up look at Pluto.

 

Pluto-palooza will provide insight into the workings of the science team and the study of the dwarf planet. The event will also look ahead to the spacecraft’s next destination.

 

It’s taken 11 years for the spacecraft to reach Pluto, but Joel Parker — Director of the Southwest Research Institute and Co-Investigator of the New Horizons project — says the mission team didn’t just sit by and wait for this moment to arrive:

 

 

Kelsi Singer is part of the Geology and Geophysics team for the mission and says they found a lot of unexpected things when passing Pluto:

 

 

Now that the spacecraft has passed by the last planet in our solar system, Parker says there is a lot to be done and that the mission isn’t over yet. New Horizons begins a two-year journey to the Kuiper Belt and object 2014-MU69:

 

 

 

Wednesday’s event begins at 7 p.m. at the Cosmosphere. The presentations will end with Thursday’s Coffee at the Cosmo at 9 a.m. Both events are free and open to the public.