Approaching Pluto can destroy New Horizons

Today, in just a few hours, the New Horizons station will pass by Pluto at a distance a little more than 10 thousand km. But the moment of truth, as you can call this event, can also be the last moment in the life of the station.

“The most dangerous moment for a collision is a passage through the equatorial region of Pluto, and a passage past all its satellites,” says Hal Weaver, a representative of the Hew Horizons team. Here, it is not the satellites themselves that are dangerous (Pluto has five, and possibly more), but dust and possible particles of rocks that are in the zone of influence of the gravitational field of the entire system.

The speed of the station now is about 50 thousand kilometers per hour. This is a huge speed at which a collision even with fine dust can lead to irreversible consequences. The most vulnerable point of the probe is the fuel tank. It is clear that there will be no colorful explosion, as they like to show in SF films. But this damage is fraught with complete failure of the station.
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In this case, we will not know about the fact of destruction / damage to the probe until the station signal is received (or, on the contrary, nothing is received). And this will happen only a few hours after the event itself. Some experts believe that damage to the station is inevitable.

Despite possible problems, the achievement of Pluto by the station is one of the most significant achievements of our civilization. And whether New Horizons will continue to explore the expanses of the universe, or fall asleep forever - the event is in any case very significant. Of course, we are all waiting for photos of Pluto and Charon at the time of the minimum convergence. I would like to hope that these data will be obtained, and then the probe will successfully go to the Kuiper belt to study the situation in this area.