NASA's New Horizons Brings Pluto Into Focus
The outermost planet in our solar system comes into breathtaking relief as NASA successfully completes a nine-year, 3-billion-mile expedition to Pluto.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt8ce514c1d22166ef/64cb51c1a21bb1938fd5763e/Title_Slide.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
It's a historic week for astronomers -- and one could argue for all of humanity -- now that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has successfully completed its flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto and beamed back mesmerizing images from the edge of our solar system.
After a nine-year journey, the grand-piano-sized probe swung by the planet this week at a distance of 7,800 miles, traveling at 31,000 miles an hour -- fast enough to cover 150 football fields per second.
In addition to photographing the ninth planet from the Sun, New Horizons will also snap shots of Pluto's five moons, including the abnormally large Charon.
(Interesting side note: Charon is known in Greek mythology as the ferryman of the dead, but the moniker was assigned by shortening the discoverer's wife name, Charlene.)
Little was known, and much remains to be discovered, about this lonely heavenly body of rock and ice, which swings around the sun in a strangely pronounced elliptical orbit.
New Horizons will take detailed measurements and images of Pluto and its moons. The spacecraft has already revealed that the planet is 50 miles wider than previously thought (or rather, dwarf planet, depending on who you ask, since Pluto was officially demoted half a decade ago).
[Read about NASA's MESSENGER mission on Mercury.]
NASA's no stranger to showing us sights that eclipse even the most fervid imaginations, from nebulae to galaxies and quasars, all viewed from a distance that makes Pluto seem like a next-door neighbor.
However, this mission brings the exploration of our solar neighborhood to a fitting, not to say patriotic, milestone -- the US is now the only nation to have visited every planet within it, in some cases multiple times.
But the larger spoils of this achievement go to those of us who have spied Saturn's rings through a telescope, to the introverted astronauts and science fiction aficionados pining for a trip to the stars, and to the stalwart supporters of Pluto's status as our ninth, and furthest, planet.
(All images: NASA)
This graphic presents a view of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, as they would appear if placed slightly above Earth's surface and viewed from a great distance. Recent measurements obtained by New Horizons indicate that Pluto has a diameter 18.5% that of Earth's, while Charon has a diameter equal to 9.5% that of Earth's.
This shot of Pluto and Charon was taken on July 11 during New Horizons' final approach. The two bodies display striking color and brightness contrast in this composite image, which combines high-resolution black-and-white Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) images colorized with Ralph -- a near infrared camera.
In this artist's rendering of the New Horizons' spacecraft, it's easy to lose the sense of scale. The probe is the size of a grand piano and is powered by a cylindrical radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Sitting atop the spacecraft is a satellite dish the size of a cocktail bar, which will serve to beam images 3 billion miles back to Earth.
This was the last and most detailed image sent to Earth before the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto on July 14. It's dominated by the large, bright feature informally named the heart, which measures approximately 1,000 miles across. The space agency noted even at this resolution, much of the heart's interior appears remarkably featureless -- possibly a sign of ongoing geologic processes.
Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before the closest approach later in the day. This was taken on Tuesday, July 14, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. After almost 10 years of waiting for this moment, the team had good cause to celebrate.
This July 13 image of Pluto and Charon is presented in false colors to make differences in surface material and features easy to see. It was obtained by the Ralph instrument on New Horizons spacecraft, which used three filters to obtain color information, exaggerated in the image to highlight compositional diversity.
The New Horizons close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator reveal a giant surprise -- a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet above the surface of the icy body. The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago, making them mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old solar system.
A swath of cliffs and troughs stretches about 600 miles from left to right across the surface of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, suggesting widespread fracturing of Charon's crust. NASA scientists said they were surprised by the lack of craters, which indicates a relatively young surface reshaped by geologic activity.
Traveling to the outer reaches of the solar system can't happen overnight -- until we find those pesky wormholes, maybe. New Horizons was launched on Jan. 19, 2006, aboard an Atlas V rocket from Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. After years of delays and funding issues, the spacecraft was finally ready for liftoff.
Pluto was first discovered in 1930, following an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet. Percival Lowell -- a wealthy Bostonian who had founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., called his find "Planet X." The name Pluto, a god of the underworld, was proposed by an 11-year-old girl in Oxford, England. Her name was Venetia Phair. She died in 2009, with New Horizons' final destination in sight.
Pluto was first discovered in 1930, following an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet. Percival Lowell -- a wealthy Bostonian who had founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., called his find "Planet X." The name Pluto, a god of the underworld, was proposed by an 11-year-old girl in Oxford, England. Her name was Venetia Phair. She died in 2009, with New Horizons' final destination in sight.
-
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like