I wasn’t the best science student in high school. Actually, for years, I wasn’t a science student in high school – but that’s another story. Regardless, there’s enough science geek in me to have been alternately amazed and amused by NASA TV’s live coverage of the arrival, after nine years of space flight to the far reaches of the solar system, of the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew close to Pluto, taking pictures and gathering data. Yesterday morning ET, the spacecraft got there, as close as it was going to get, and focused all its energies (literally) on fact-finding and picture-taking. The space-flight mission folks cheered as that time arrived, and cheered again, about 12 hours later, as New Horizons turned briefly to Earth’s direction to send notice that it had survived the flyby and recorded the expected amount of data. Today, that data – transmitted in small bytes, at somewhere between 1Kand 3K – will be downloaded, and the first of the latest, nearest images revealed. Meanwhile, on PBS, there’s this new story of the nine-year mission. Check local listings.