A long-awaited radio signal from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft landed on planet Earth late Tuesday, confirming the faraway space probe performed as expected during a one-shot flyby of Pluto at the solar system’s outer frontier.
Pluto and its Texas-sized moon Charon share an alien environment on the Solar System’s outer frontier, with patches of organic ices and diverse rock types illustrated in color imagery released Tuesday.
The Atlas 5 rocket emerges from the Vertical Integration Facility for rollout to Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral in preparation to launch GPS 2F-10 on Wednesday at 11:36 a.m. EDT.
A speedy space probe barreled past Pluto for a one-shot flyby Tuesday, becoming the first spacecraft to ever visit the frozen, reddish world at the solar system’s distant frontier.
Pluto’s salmon-colored surface shines in an incredible view taken Monday as New Horizons barreled toward the icy outpost for Tuesday’s historic close-up flyby.
Using high-fidelity modeling and image analysis to resolve Pluto’s exact shape, scientists examining pictures from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft said Monday they have confirmed Pluto is the largest known object in a frozen outer zone of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt.
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.
There is no sign of an undiscovered moon lurking around Pluto in data streaming back to Earth from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, and that is surprising to Alan Stern, the scientist in charge of the probe.
NASA’s New Horizons probe, armored for a nine-year journey through the cold, inhospitable depths of space, launched in January 2006 from Cape Canaveral, and all systems are go for a flyby of Pluto Tuesday. See photos of the spacecraft before it was packaged for launch on an Atlas 5 rocket.
The first hints of dramatic cliffs, chasms and craters are showing up in new imagery of Pluto and its Texas-sized moon Charon as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft prepares to bolt by the icy worlds Tuesday.