“Mission Pluto” will air on National Geographic Channel at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT on July 14. No spacecraft has ever come closer to the planet, which orbits the sun at an average distance of 3.7 billion miles.
Advertisement
If New Horizons were to pass above New York City in a flyby like the one the probe will do of Pluto, its camera would be able to pick out striking details. It was designed and built by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which also is managing the $700 million mission for NASA.
“We did hit a speed bump”, Stern said.
Normal science operations will recommence today, and mission scientists say that nothing vital will be lost because of the downtime. “You can see Central Park and count the ponds in Central Park”.
“Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light”, said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist. Indeed, the best images of Pluto by NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope show the object as a fuzzy, pixelated ball. This view is centered roughly on the area that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. It is believed that these planets reflect what other worlds, including Earth, were like before the planets condensed. But Pluto is different: Even though it is out beyond the gas giants, it has a solid, icy surface. Features from all sides of Pluto can now be seen at a glance and from a consistent perspective, making it much easier to compare their shapes and sizes. “Also puzzling is the longstanding and dramatic difference in the colors and appearance of Pluto compared to its darker and grayer moon Charon”.
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that sent New Horizons into safe mode for a brief period.
Still, the temporary shutdown caused New Horizons to miss an opportunity for long-distance photography of the dwarf planet.
New Horizons is already bringing Pluto into focus.
Advertisement
“The universe has a lot more variety than we thought about, and that’s wonderful”, Stern said. “We should not allow budget constraints to hamper the scientific discovery that USA space exploration-manned and unmanned-will allow in the coming decades”.
