Mumbai man to steer Nasa's historic flyby

LAURAL (MARYLAND): Mumbai will have its footprint on Nasa's New Horizon spacecraft's trajectory while executing a nail-biting historic flyby of the most distant and ancient object in the solar system, Ultima Thule, around 11am (IST) on Tuesday. The reason: the person who is playing a key role in navigating the spacecraft to this object, discovered just four years ago, is a Mumbaikar.

Shyam Bhaskaran of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was born in 1963 at a clinic in Matunga. Bhaskaran, who has navigated a number of Nasa missions, spoke to TOI on Sunday, recalling that he stayed at Kenilworth, Pedder Road, which housed officials of the department of atomic energy.

Bhaskaran, who attended preschool at Kemps Corner, said he remembered playing with friends in and around Kenilworth. "I had a tricycle and I used to pedal it around the area." He left for the US in 1968, but returned to Mumbai in 1981 to meet relatives. "I found it was a really big city, full of life and crowded. I will certainly revisit in the future," he said.


About the challenges involved in navigating the mission, he said that compared to the flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, Ultima Thule which is nearly six billion km from Pluto, was easier since there were no objects around. "But it was not without challenge because we have never done such an encounter of an object which was unknown, small and dark. Finding the object is difficult," he explained. Ultima Thule is a traditional name of distant places beyond the known world.

On January 1, the New Horizons spacecraft will be flying 3,500 km above the surface of Ultima Thule. This distance is three times closer to how far it was from Pluto.

Bhaskaran said that at 4am on Sunday, the navigation team, after a meeting, concluded that with regards to navigating the spacecraft, everything looked good.