NASA’s New Horizons probe completed its fly-by of the dwarf planet Pluto this morning at 7:49 AM ET, completing a 9+ year, 3 billion mile journey to our favorite Kuiper belt object and is now continuing off into the outer reaches of the solar system.
On its way by Pluto, New Horizons snapped the clearest and most hi-resolution images ever taken of the dwarf planet, but since the probe can’t upload data back to Earth while it’s scienceing, we won’t see the best ones until tomorrow (also keep in mind that it takes 4.5 hours for signals to travel between Earth and Pluto, even at the speed of light!). New Horizons’ multiple instruments are collecting so much data that it will take nearly 16 months to get it all sent back to Earth! So keep following the NASA mission page and official Twitter account for plenty of Pluto updates over the next year.
Above is a collection of Pluto as we’ve seen it through the years, from its 1930 discovery at Lowell observatory (bottom), to Hubble’s 100-pixel Atari version taken in 1996 (middle), to New Horizons’ most recent color image taken July 13, 2015.
Here’s to the New Horizons team, congratulations from everyone on Earth!
(scale image of Pluto and its moon Charon compared to Earth)
Interesting side note: The dwarf planet Pluto’s name was suggested in a letter by an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Venetia Burney. But what about this Pluto?
While there’s no documentation to back up the claim, Disney’s Pluto character debuted just nine months after the dwarf planet’s discovery in 1930, and it’s widely assumed that Walt Disney’s animators were capitalizing on Pluto fever. I’d say we’ve got it again, wouldn’t you?
Tags:
#history #space #the power of science #Pluto #oh look an update
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