AN EAST Lancastrian is boldly going where no man has been before – and then he’ll head back to Pendle to share his discoveries.

John Spencer is on mission control for a 3.6billion-mile trip to the outer extremities of space.

The Colne planetary scientist, who attended Newtown Nursery School, Lord Street Junior, Colne Grammar School, and Nelson and Colne College, is part of the control and programming team steering a $700m Nasa voyage to Pluto.

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The New Horizons spaceship flies past the dwarf planet today.

Over the course of the next few days Nasa will start to receive photographs and data from the spacecraft. But the people of Pendle will be able to get a real insight into the inner workings of the mission as John is returning to Pendle in September when he will be hosting an evening at The ACE Centre in Nelson, presenting new images and data of this memorable event.

John, who read a BSc in Geology at Cambridge and a PhD in planetary science at the University of Arizona, is now a key member of Nasa’s team based in Boulder, Colorado, America.

Earlier this month an excitable John commented on the first images transmitted back to earth, which were captured a mere 8,000,000km away.

He said: “They’re still a little blurry but they’re the best pictures we’ve ever seen of Pluto, and they’re only going to get better.”

Beverly McKiernan, the operations manager at The ACE Centre in Nelson, says the craft, which set off in 2006, could help mankind understand earth itself.

She said: “Nasa believes that Pluto is a storage area of the building blocks of our solar system and the purpose of the mission is to beam back information gathered about polar caps, atmosphere and weather.

“By using this data, Nasa hopes to understand the development of the Earth and solar system.”

“The New Horizons spacecraft is an amazing piece of technology. It is the fastest man-made object ever to leave earth, travelling at 10 times the speed of a bullet (or over one million miles a day).”

Tickets are £2 each for John’s presentation, which will held be on Friday, September 25, at 7.30pm. To book, contact The ACE Centre on 01282 661080 or visit acecentre.co.uk.