Legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking congratulated the New Horizons team for successfully sending the robotic spacecraft to the very edges of the solar system on Tuesday.
“Billions of miles from earth, this little robotic spacecraft will show us the first glimpse of mysterious Pluto, a distant icy world on the very end of our solar system," Hawking said in a video message posted to Facebook.
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Hawking, who suffers from ALS, noted that Tuesday marks 50 years since the first successful robotic mission to another planet took place -- when Mariner 4 took images of Mars.
"Now the solar system will be further opened up to us, revealing the secrets of distant Pluto. The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed," Hawking said in the video.
"We explore because we are human and we want to know. I hope that Pluto will help us on that journey. I will be watching closely and I hope you will too.”