Joshua SokolOn a Friday at the end of 2018, the top brass of a NASA deep space mission convened for a tense meeting. Hour by hour the New Horizons probe was hurtling toward a New Year’s Day rendezvous with Arrokoth, an ancient, icy rock at the edge of the Solar System.
The team had one last chance to send instructions for pointing the probe’s cameras. Success would ensure in-frame pictures of Arrokoth, and the clues it held for how the planets formed.