Tag

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this image of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 13, 2015.

These new images of Pluto may very well be the highest-resolution images that we’re going to get of Nix, Hydra, Charon and Pluto.

A recent analysis of the images reveals two different layers of haze. It captured the sunlight shining through the tiny planet’s atmosphere, revealing a haze that rested as high as 130 km above the surface.

Releasing a tranche of new images, mission controllers also gave more information about crucial new data gathered during the spacecraft’s historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14. The image was taken at a distance of 1.25 million miles from the dwarf planet and...

Releasing a tranche of new images, mission controllers also gave more information about crucial new data gathered during the spacecraft’s historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14.

As it has neared the dwarf planet, the probe has been sending back increasingly clearer images of its target, and got as close as possible at around 11.50am GMT Tuesday – that’s 12.50pm United Kingdom time, 4.50am Pacific time or 9.50pm Australian time. The probe...

“This terrain is not easy to explain”, said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team.

That was borne out by a lack of a single impact crater on the surface in the image, the scientist said. That means that region of the planet may still be geo-logically active today.

This combination of images from July 1 to July 3, 2015, provided by NASA shows Pluto at different distances from the New Horizons spacecraft. Stern’s coveted job title now is principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. Sharper versions will be sent down over the...

Taken at a height of 12,500km above the planet it shows complex surface features including plains and mountain ranges. It looked like a fuzzy blob in our best telescopes.

At 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, the spacecraft sent messages back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, confirming it had completed its mission, ending nerve-wracking hours for the craft’s operators on Earth. “While...

When it comes to landmark achievements in space exploration, today will be a date for the history books as the day humanity reached Pluto for the first time.

His work involved thousands of hours spent pouring over millions of images of stars, according to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the New Horizons mission for NASA.

New Horizons’ closest approach was scheduled for 4:49 a.m. PDT when the spacecraft would be just 7,800 miles away – close enough to take the first high-resolution images of Pluto’s mottled landscape. But over the past few weeks, we have been able to enjoy...

An unmanned NASA spacecraft whizzed by Pluto yesterday, making its closest approach in the climax of a decade-long journey to explore the dwarf planet for the first time, the USA space agency said.