At around 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Fox Newsperson Greta Van Susteren let it be known that she was really pissed, and inconvenienced, and also honestly suspicious of the amount of time it took NASA to release images taken of Pluto in a 2015 flyby. What secrets could be on Pluto that it took a whole YEAR for NASA’s resident Bobby Finger to photoshop it away? What lazy intern forgot to send the floppy disc to the newspaper!?
On July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took a series of photographs from 9,850 miles away from Pluto during a flyby, before the probe dove historically close to the planet, making it only 7,800 miles away. Even though the flyby happened 10 months ago, NBC News reports, the spacecraft will be sending data to Earth until the fall.
Last year, Gizmodo explained in bafflingly precise terms why it takes so long for data transmitted by New Horizons to reach Greta Van Susteren—it has to do with a very far distance and a very weak connection.
And now the images are here here, and they look like they were taken of just, like, any normal rock. I could’ve taken that in five minutes, out back in my yard, and uploaded it to NBC News in, I don’t know, 30 seconds? Not impressed, “NASA.” In America, we don’t wait for discovery.