Tag: JHUAPL

  • Scientists thrilled with mountains on Pluto, chasms on Charon

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION A snapshot of Pluto shows fresh deposits of water ice bedrock and 11,000-foot mountains, revealing evidence Pluto’s surface is one of the youngest in the solar system. Photo credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Post-flyby images from NASA’s New Horizons probe show Pluto is a surprisingly active world in the deep freeze…

  • Cliffs, chasms and craters revealed in latest New Horizons images

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    An annotated version of an image of Pluto captured July 11 by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument. Pluto’s northern hemisphere appears in the image, with its equator near the bottom of the disk. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The first hints of dramatic cliffs, chasms and craters are showing up in new imagery of Pluto…

  • Pluto probe project manager gives advice to team

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    New Horizons project manager Glen Fountain, a veteran of nearly 50 years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told the Pluto probe’s team to live in the moment for Tuesday’s historic flyby, but look out for last-minute snags. Email the author. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

  • Pluto stakes claim as ‘King of the Kuiper Belt’

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    Pluto’s bright, mysterious “heart” is rotating into view, ready for its close-up on close approach, in this image taken by New Horizons on July 12 from a distance of 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers). Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Using high-fidelity modeling and image analysis to resolve Pluto’s exact shape, scientists examining pictures from NASA’s New Horizons…

  • NASA probe finally on Pluto’s doorstep

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Three billion miles and nine-and-a-half years from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons probe is racing toward a historic July 14 flyby of Pluto, providing the first close-up views of the most famous denizen of the Kuiper Belt, a vast hinterland…

  • Question time with Alan Stern, the Pluto evangelist

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    Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator, started thinking about a mission to Pluto in the 1980s. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani July is a month of rich rewards for Alan Stern, the scientist who shepherded the New Horizons spacecraft from the drawing board to Pluto, and the payoff will be sweet. New Horizons comes closest to Pluto…

  • New Horizons gets last look at Pluto’s mystery spots

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    New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager captured this view of Pluto early Saturday, July 11, at a distance of 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers). It shows mysterious dark spots along Pluto’s equatorial belt and linear features suggestive of polygonal shapes. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The New Horizons spacecraft has captured its last view of mysterious dark…

  • Pluto probe provides appetizer for next week’s flyby

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    New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015. Color data from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument was added to colorize the image. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Living up to promises that the view from New Horizons will only get better, the Pluto-bound…

  • Back in action, New Horizons returns fresh view of Pluto

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    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. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The New Horizons spacecraft speeding toward Pluto has returned a new image of the icy world lurking at the solar system’s outer frontier —…

  • New Horizons back in business after weekend scare

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    NASA released this image of Pluto on Monday. Pluto’s equator, where mysterious evenly-spaced dark terrain appears, is seen near the bottom of the dwarf planet’s disk. New Horizons’ LORRI telescopic camera took this image July 3, and scientists added color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph imager recorded earlier in the mission. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University…