NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Stays the Course to Pluto

But nobody knows what the are.

New Horizons principal investigator Dr Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) said the difference in the appearance and color of Pluto and Charon was “a real puzzle”.

A new timelapse gif shows Pluto and its largest moon Charon coming into focus as the craft flew about 21 million miles closer to the dwarf planet over the course of a little less than a month. The decision on whether to keep the spacecraft on its original course or adopt a Safe Haven by Other Trajectory, or “SHBOT” path, had to be made this week since the last opportunity to maneuver New Horizons onto an alternate trajectory is July 4. It is worth noting, however, that these images are still very early in the flyby game, so we’ll need to be patient until we start drawing any conclusions about surface composition or whether Pluto possesses clouds in its thin exosphere. These will include details of the instruments being carried by the spacecraft, what they will help to discover about Pluto, as well as milestones achieved by the fastest spacecraft ever launched.

Scientists are at a loss to explain the intriguing spots which are remarkably consistent in both their even spacing along the dwarf planet’s equator, and their shape and size.

Today, the New Horizons spacecraft is 4.7 billion kilometers away from Earth and 14.9 million kilometers from Pluto. Program managers announced that New Horizons will be passing over the more geologically-interesting hemisphere of the dwarf planet during this closest approach.

Scientists first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.

Shortly, New Horizons’ Mission Operations Center, which is based at Johns Hopkins University, will upload the commands that will drive the observation sequence during the flyby. Getting that data depends on radio signals being sent from Earth to the spacecraft at precise times as it flies through the shadows of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. New Horizons will be the first spacecraft to visit one of these mysterious worlds.

But less than two weeks from now, New Horizons’ imaging equipment will be able to snap photos with the kind of resolution that could pick out “ponds in New York City’s Central Park”, mission team members said.

According to Engadget, the space probe is also designed to study the environment around Pluto by detecting ions in an attempt to shed more light into Pluto’s escaping atmosphere and how quickly it is happening.