Already, NASA has released images that show that Pluto may just have a white patch close to its pole that could be frozen methane or water ice.
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Each one is thought to be about 300 miles in diameter, however scientists as stumped as to what exactly they are and why their size and spacing are so similar.
Alan Stern from the Southwest Research Institute, who is the principal investigator said in a statement that the can see very large regional differences in brightness across the planet.
The new pictures, which combined black-and-white images of Pluto and Charon, shows Pluto has two remarkably different faces.
The spots are a mystery to New Horizons team right now; they have yet to see dark spots with consistency and spacing like this. While Pluto has a brown color, its biggest moon Charon appears a lot like our moon.
After passing Pluto, New Horizons will follow the earlier Voyager probes into deep space. Among the team, we’ve been impressed at how much they match. Astronomers believe methane on Pluto may be left over from the original material that formed the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago. The New Horizons team has been constantly updating that navigational information as the probe moves closer and can obtain more precise information about Pluto’s location.
Sen-NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been given the all clear as it heads towards its historic flyby of Pluto and its moons this month on July 14. In short, the spacecraft will take Pluto’s measure for the first time.
The $700 million New Horizons mission launched in January 2006, tasked with performing the first-ever up-close investigation of Pluto. For comparison, that is just under 40 times the distance from Earth to the Moon, and New Horizons will cover that in a sprint lasting less than two weeks.
In order to come to this conclusion, the scientists equipped New Horizons with special technology known as infrared spectrometer. Because New Horizons is traveling at 30,800 miles per hour (49,600 kph), a particle as small as a grain of rice could be lethal.
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Today, New Horizons is a bit more than 9 million miles away. However the flyby is so fast, and such a precious opportunity, that the spacecraft will focus entirely on Pluto during the July 14 encounter, at the cost of leaving the scientists and engineers back home in suspense.
