NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its Feb flyby – and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.
Each week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft transmits data stored on its digital recorders from its flight through the Pluto system on July 14. These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto.
The Journey
New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015, culminating with Pluto closest approach on July 14, 2015. As part of an extended mission, pending NASA approval, the spacecraft is expected to head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine another of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit.
Sending a spacecraft on this long journey is helping us to answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies.
“These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto’s geology,”
- New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
“Nothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we’re there already – down among the craters, mountains and ice fields – less than five months after flyby! The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable."
You are still a planet to me, PLUTO..!!
Upvote, Resteem, Comment & Follow to me on
Support me by Re-steeming, it really helps and Read my other top articles below:
1.https://steemit.com/photography/@aksharsharma/plotagraph-software-can-turn-any-photo-into-an-animated-gif
2.https://steemit.com/vfx/@aksharsharma/behind-the-scenes-vfx-marvel-s-black-panther-3
3.https://steemit.com/drugs/@aksharsharma/fifa-world-cup-2018-russian-stadiums-to-allow-cocaine-cannabis-and-heroine-news-9