NASA published some breathtaking photographs of Pluto that New Horizons took during its July flyby. They describe the surface as “a frozen wonderland”. These images are three billion miles away from Earth and offer the best views of the tiny planet in the Kuiper Belt. They are among the most detailed views of Pluto we have seen in many decades, according to American space agency. Every week, New Horizons, an interplanetary space probe that was launched in January 2006 as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program to study Pluto, transmits data stored in its digital recorders from its voyage through the Pluto system on July 14th, 2015. The pictures published on December 4th are part of a sequence taken near the probe’s closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 77-85 metres (250-280 feet) per pixel. These images show features that are less than half of the area in a typical city block. This image shows the Mountainous Shoreline at Sputnik Planum. Informally, the al-Idrisi Mountains are made up of large blocks of Pluto’s water-ice. John Spencer, a New Horizons scientist member said that the mountains surrounding Sputnik Planum were “absolutely stunning at this resolution.” These new details, especially the crumbled ridges within the rubbly surrounding many of the mountain, confirm our previous impression that these mountains are enormous ice blocks which have been jostled, tumbled, and somehow transported there.” (Image: www.nasa.gov. Credits to NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. There are many types of terrains. New Horizons took these photos and captured many of them, including mountains, glaciers, and craters. John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said: “These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth.” “New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see.” The images form an 80-kilometre (50 mile) wide strip on a distant world in our solar system. These photographs are taken from Pluto’s jagged horizontal about miles (northern of Sputnik Planum), across the al-Idrisi Mountains and across the icy plains. The New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder (Colorado) said that these new photographs offer a stunning, high-resolution window into Pluto’s geology. This level of detail was not available to Venus and Mars for decades, but we are already at Pluto – among the mountains, craters and ice field – in less than five months. “The science that we can accomplish with these images are simply amazing.” Ice plains and layers. William McKinnon, the deputy leader of New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging, stated that “Impactcraters are nature’s drill rigs, and new, higher-resolution photos of larger craters appear to prove that Pluto’s icy crust, least at certain places, is clearly layered.” “Looking into Pluto’s depths means looking back at geologic time. This will allow us to piece together Pluto’s geological history.” Image: www.nasa.gov. Credits to NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. New Horizons has the Telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager. It captured the images shown on this page about fifteen minutes before the probe’s closest approach to Pluto – when it was just 17,000 kilometres (10,000 miles) from the dwarf planet’s surface. These images were taken using an uncommon observing mode. Instead of using the standard ‘point & click’ mode, LORRI took photos every 3 seconds as the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera(MVIC) was scanning Pluto’s surface. The mode does not require long exposures to ensure that images don’t look blurred. NASA states that these new images have a resolution six times higher than New Horizons’ global Pluto map and five times more than Voyager 2’s 1989.” images of Neptune’s largest moon. This image illustrates how faulting and erosion have transformed this part of the dwarf planet’s crust into rugged badlands. (Image: www.nasa.gov. Credits to NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. The New Horizons team states that more imagery will be available from the set in the coming days. This should show even more spectacular terrain at high resolution. Pluto Pluto is an obscure planet located in the Kuiper Belt. It is the biggest and second-most massive known dwarf planet in our Solar System, and the 9th largest and 10th most-massive known object that directly orbits the Sun. The only child to name it was Venetia Burney. After it was discovered in 1930, Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old girl who lived in Oxford, England, suggested that this new discovery needed to be named after the Roman god of the underworld. This suggestion was made by her grandfather to Lowell Observatory, and it was approved. Pluto is home to five moons. Image: www.nasa.gov. Pluto is very small. You would only weigh 5kg (4 lbs) if you were to weigh 64 km (140 pounds) on Earth. Although a dwarf planet orbits our Sun, it is smaller than Earth. The dwarf planet does not have the ability to move other objects around it. NASA states that Pluto lies on average 3.6 billion miles (4.8 billion km) from the sun. This is 40 more than Earth. Pluto circles the sun around an oval, much like a racetrack. Pluto orbits the sun in an oval like a racetrack. This means that it is closer sometimes to the sun than other times. Pluto can still be seen billions of kilometers away from the sun at its nearest point. This NASA video features the best images of Pluto obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft during its July 2015. flyby.
