Tuesday 30 June 2015

Pluto flyby getting close

New Horizons is soon to flyby dwarf planet Pluto.  Launch was back on 19th January 2006 and at that time Pluto was still a planet in the Solar System = the ninth planet. There have been new moons discovered since launch date too.  The tremendous NASA mission will flyby Pluto on 14th July and will give us the first clear images of Pluto and its main moon Charon - seen in the photographs below:-
The image was taken from the space probe in mid April this year.

Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

The flyby will last just two hours.  Then New Horizons will continue flying out to the Kuiper Belt until the mission comes to an end in 2026.