New Horizons encounters Ultimatouli this week on planetary radio.

Welcome and happy new year once again.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human

adventure across our solar system and beyond. You already know that the New Horizon spacecraft

successfully flew by that faraway object known officially as 2014

MU69.

And you may know that I was at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab to cover this most distant ever encounter

for humanity.

I'm going to use this week's episode to take you behind the scenes.

We'll meet many of the leaders of this magnificently successful mission, along with some of the

great people who gathered at APL for what we all hoped would be a celebration.

You'll hear from author and space historian Andy Chaken,

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern,

astrophysicist, member of the New Horizons team

and guitarist for Queen Brian May,

along with many others. We'll close the show as we always do by visiting

with Bruce Betts for What's Up.

My red-eye flight from California got me to Baltimore on the morning of December 29th. I had just enough time to

reach the Applied Physics Lab to join a tour. There were two and a half days to go before New Horizons

who would make its closest approach to 2014 MU69.

By the way, absolutely no one at APL referred to it by that name.

It was and is ultimatoulli to the Mission Team and Friends.

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