{"id":19547,"date":"2015-12-06T00:06:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T16:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-probe-sends-its-closest-close-up-of-pluto\/"},"modified":"2015-12-06T00:06:15","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T16:06:15","slug":"nasas-new-horizons-probe-sends-its-closest-close-up-of-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-probe-sends-its-closest-close-up-of-pluto\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe sends its closest close-up of Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_215842\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-215842\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-215842\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-pluto3-630x533.jpg\" alt=\"Pluto heart\" width=\"630\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-pluto3-630x533.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-pluto3.jpg 718w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-215842\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A heart-shaped patch of nitrogen-rich ice (outlined in red) lies next to a mountain range on Pluto, as seen in a picture from NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe. (Credit: NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI with heartification by Vicknesh Selvamani \/ @Vicknesh96)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If you heart Pluto, you\u2019ll love the sharpest, closest close-up of the dwarf planet, just&nbsp;sent back by NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe.<\/p>\n<p>The images, captured from a distance of 10,000 miles during the July 14 flyby, include a heart-shaped block of nitrogen-rich ice right on the edge of the big heart-shaped region known informally as Tombaugh Regio.<\/p>\n<p>You can also see the craggy blocks of water ice that form the al-Idrisi mountains, bull\u2019s-eye impact craters on&nbsp;Sputnik Planum, and ripples and layers in Pluto\u2019s icy crust. The pictures have a maximum resolution of 250 feet per pixel, which is less than the length of a football field.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"New Horizons\u2019 Best View of Pluto\u2019s Craters, Mountains and Icy Plains\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B0xkupKwjfM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto\u2019s geology,\u201d the mission\u2019s principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, said in Friday\u2019s image advisory. \u201cNothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we\u2019re there already \u2013 down among the craters, mountains and ice fields \u2013 less than five months after flyby! The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s pictures were assembled into a mosaic that shows a 50-mile-wide, 500-mile-long strip, extending from Pluto\u2019s horizon down to its icy plains. This picture gives you the lay of the land, but you can also watch the video to pan through the view, or zoom in on a high-resolution version.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_215838\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-215838\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-215838 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-mosaic-630x3234.jpg\" alt=\"Pluto mosaic\" width=\"630\" height=\"3234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-mosaic-630x3234.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151205-mosaic.jpg 1041w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-215838\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This mosaic is composed of the sharpest views of Pluto that New Horizons obtained during its July 14 flyby. The images were captured with New Horizons\u2019 Long Range Reconnaissance Imager over a timespan of about a minute. (Credit: NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft stored up gigabytes\u2019 worth of data and imagery during the flyby and has been slowly and steadily sending the readings back to Earth. Still more images from the closest close approach are expected in the days ahead, and it\u2019ll be another year before all the pictures are sent down. Then, if all goes as hoped, the New Horizons team will focus more fully on the probe\u2019s next target, a smaller world in the broad ring of icy material known as the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A heart-shaped patch of nitrogen-rich ice (outlined in red) lies next to a mountain range on Pluto, as seen in a picture from NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe. (Credit: NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI with heartification by Vicknesh Selvamani \/ @Vicknesh96) If you heart Pluto, you\u2019ll love the sharpest, closest close-up of the dwarf planet, just&nbsp;sent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2840,190,2174,2848],"class_list":["post-19547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dwarf-planets","tag-nasa","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}