Tag: Pluto
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New Horizons on track for historic New Year’s Day flyby of Ultima Thule
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben Thirteen years outbound from Earth and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons probe is healthy and on course for a…
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New Horizons to continue mission of discovery with Kuiper Belt encounter
Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Kuiper Belt object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Alex Parker Scientists planning the the next phase of NASA’s New Horizons mission, a robotic craft that completed the first exploration of Pluto in 2015, are going into the flyby of a frozen, faraway city-sized clump of rock on New Year’s Day…
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Study shows Pluto should be counted among solar system’s ocean worlds
The expanse of Sputnik Planitia, the bright region visible in this image of Pluto, might cover an ocean of slushy water-ice. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Scientists believe they can explain how an ocean of water is lurking beneath an ice sheet inside Pluto’s prominent heart-shaped region, an iconic frozen landscape discovered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby…
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Water ice abounds in Pluto’s frigid bedrock
This false-color image, derived from observations in infrared light by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shows where the spectral features of water ice are abundant on Pluto’s surface. It is based on two LEISA scans of Pluto obtained on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers). The…
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Pluto’s floating mountains, intriguing structures fascinate scientists
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. This is the last and most detailed image sent to Earth before the spacecraft’s…
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Pluto’s floating mountains, intriguing structures fascinate scientists
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. This is the last and most detailed image sent to Earth before the spacecraft’s…
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Rugged swath of Pluto now resolved in color
A cosmic shoreline is pictured here, where the vast icy plain informally named Sputnik Planum borders rugged mountains made of water ice blocks standing up to 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) tall. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute A high-resolution scan of Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft published last week is now…
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See the highest-resolution snapshots from July’s Pluto flyby
In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI Scientists are marveling at some of the best views of Pluto recorded by the New Horizons spacecraft during its July 14 flyby of the unexplored icy dwarf in a…
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‘Weird’ mountains on Pluto may be ice volcanoes
The informally named feature Wright Mons, located south of Sputnik Planum on Pluto, is an unusual feature that’s about 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide and 13,000 feet (4 kilometers) high. It displays a summit depression (visible in the center of the image) that’s approximately 35 miles (56 kilometers) across, with a distinctive hummocky texture on…
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A crescent Pluto shines like a jewel in the Kuiper Belt
This image, taken 15 minutes after the New Horizons spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14, reveals the distant world’s rugged terrain and atmospheric haze layers. This image, first published in early September, was re-released by NASA Thursday after further image progressing to bring out details. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI An image released Thursday, taken by…