Pluto at Last! NASA Spacecraft Arrives for Dwarf Planet Close-Up Tuesday
Mike Wall
On Tuesday morning (July 14) — nine and a half years after launching, and a quarter-century after its mission began to take shape — NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will perform history’s first flyby of Pluto. [See the Latest Pluto Photos by New Horizons] The spacecraft is performing very well. On Sunday, NASA and New Horizons scientists unveiled the latest photos from New Horizons, including a tantalizing view of what appears to be canyons and craters on Pluto’s moon Charon, and a new view of the dwarf planet itself. (The dwarf planet orbits about 39 times farther from the sun than Earth does, on average.) That flyby a generation ago marked the last time humanity got its first up-close look at a planet — and left Pluto as the only planet in the solar system yet to receive a spacecraft visit.
Tags:
- New Horizons
- Pluto
- Charon (moon)
- Dwarf planet
- Planet
- Astronautics
- Spacecraft
- Physical sciences
- Space exploration
- Flight
- Planets of the Solar System
- Local Interstellar Cloud
- Planets
- Solar System
- Space science
- Astronomy
- Outer space
- Science
- Planetary science
- Bodies of the Solar System
- Astronomical objects
- Spaceflight
- Planemos