NASA’s New Horizons: A “Heart” from Pluto as Flyby Begins
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July 8, 2015
Image above: This image of Pluto from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was received on July 8, and has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument. Image Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI.
After a more than nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto, it’s show time for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, as the flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.
In the early morning hours of July 8, mission scientists received this new view of Pluto—the most detailed yet returned by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. The image was taken on July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode.
This view is centered roughly on the area that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. This side of Pluto is dominated by three broad regions of varying brightness. Most prominent are an elongated dark feature at the equator, informally known as “the whale,” and a large heart-shaped bright area measuring some 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) across on the right. Above those features is a polar region that is intermediate in brightness.
“The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today,” said Jeff Moore, Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team Leader of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It will be incredible!”
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrives at Pluto on July 14th
Video above: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrives at Pluto on July 14th; a journey lasting nearly 10 years and traveling over 3 billion miles. Watch coverage of the historic flyby of Pluto on NASA Television as NASA counts down to the Pluto encounter of a lifetime.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
For more information about New Horizons mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html
Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Tricia Talbert/NASA TV.
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