Pluto’s Features get better as New Horizons approaches near | Uncover California

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will zoom by Pluto on July 14.

That new mystery, and the question of why Charon is so much darker than Pluto, are proof that the dwarf planet is stubbornly holding onto its secrets – even as New Horizons is fast approaching to pry them away.

After seven weeks of detailed searches for dust clouds, rings, and other potential hazards, the New Horizons team has decided the Spacecraft will remain on its original path through the Pluto System instead of making a late course correction to detour around any hazards.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has made its last planned targeting manoeuvre as it bears down on Pluto. New Horizons will show us Pluto like we’ve never seen it before. While a lot of methane on Earth is produced through biological processes, scientists think that the methane seen on Pluto might be primordial, left over from the beginning of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, NASA said.

New Horizons’ Mission Operations Center is based at Johns Hopkins University. Whether that ice is methane or water, remains to be seen, but the debate remains about what might be happening on a dwarf planet that humans simply haven’t had the opportunity to really investigate thoroughly to this point.

The probe – which launched to space in 2006 – recently detected methane on Pluto’s surface.

So many questions surround the system that it presents “a scientific wonderland”, Alan Stern, lead scientist for the mission, told the Monitor. While Pluto appears a cross between beige and orange, its large moon Charon is gray, a phenomenon Stern said is also puzzling.

“The infrared spectrometer on Nasa’s spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface”, the statement said. And so is New Horizons, which will fulfill its destiny when it performs a flyby of Pluto on July 14th.

The left panel features the face of Pluto that will be best observed as New Horizons passes.

Though Pluto meets the first and second criterion of being a planet-it is a celestial body orbiting the Sun with a sufficient enough mass to assume a round shape-because of the third criterion, which specifies that the planet must clear the area around its orbit.

However, it is still the same old Pluto that we grew up with, no matter what we choose to call it today.

The same instrument that has been scanning ahead for collision danger to the fast-moving probe is also revealing new details about Pluto’s surface, including a row of mysterious dark spots along the equator (photo).