This month marks the 10th anniversary of the New Horizons spacecraft making its historic flyby of Pluto. The mission is still healthy and still being used for science and has recently demonstrated that astral navigation is possible, even from inside our solar system. From it’s location in the Kuiper Belt, it has been able to measure shifts in the observed locations of nearby stars compared to background objects, and researchers could use those shifts to calculate the missions position. While it’s way easier to use techniques like measure light travel times and such, it’s cool to know the stuff of science fiction is now becoming a modern day reality.
The New Horizon mission is one of the nearly 2 dozen functional spacecraft the presidents budget seek to decommission. If you want to see more objects visited and more science done by New Horizons, call your representatives and ask that they fund space science.