PLUTO!!! July 13, 2015

This image of the dwarf planet was captured from New Horizons on July 13, 2015, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 766,000 kilometers from the surface.

NASA’s comment:

Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015 when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. This is the last and most detailed image sent to Earth before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14. The color image has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument that was acquired earlier on July 13. This view is dominated by the large, bright feature informally named the “heart,” which measures approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across. The heart borders darker equatorial terrains, and the mottled terrain to its east (right) are complex. However, even at this resolution, much of the heart’s interior appears remarkably featureless—possibly a sign of ongoing geologic processes.
Date 13 July 2015

Image attribution: By NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Compare NASA’s Pluto images from 2015 (above) and 1990, below.

Pluto and Charon

Photo attribution: The above photo was taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, in 1990, and was said by NASA to be one of the “clearest pictures ever of our solar system’s most distant and enigmatic object: the dwarf planet Pluto, and its moon, Charon.”  NASA stated that the observations were made with the European Space Agency’s Faint Object Camera. Date: 4 October 1990, “Pluto and Charon”

If you browsed with Google on July 13, 2015, you saw Google’s banner honoring the July 14, 2015 flyby of the dwarf planet, Pluto, and its moon, Charon, by the NASA space vehicle, New Horizons. If you clicked on that Google banner, it led you straight to NASA’s page of articles on Pluto, of which we offer one story, below.

Pluto and Charon: New Horizons Dynamic Duo

They’re a fascinating pair: Two icy worlds, spinning around their common center of gravity like a pair of figure skaters clasping hands. Scientists believe they were shaped by a cosmic collision billions of years ago, and yet, in many ways, they seem more like strangers than siblings.

A high-contrast array of bright and dark features covers Pluto’s surface, while on Charon, only a dark polar region interrupts a generally more uniform light gray terrain. The reddish materials that color Pluto are absent on Charon. Pluto has a significant atmosphere; Charon does not. On Pluto, exotic ices like frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide have been found, while Charon’s surface is made of frozen water and ammonia compounds. The interior of Pluto is mostly rock, while Charon contains equal measures of rock and water ice.

“These two objects have been together for billions of years, in the same orbit, but they are totally different,” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

Charon is about 750 miles (1200 kilometers) across, about half the diameter of Pluto—making it the solar system’s largest moon relative to its planet.

Read the rest of this article and more in this series by NASA at Pluto and Charon

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons
Visit the next page to see a list of the five spacecraft types and their missions, culminating in the New Horizons mission to fly by Pluto on July 14, 2015.

1990 Hubble telescope image: Wikimedia Commons

After visiting the next page, read on to see the VIDEOS.