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By Ashley Strickland, CNN
6 minute read
Published 4:14 PM EDT, Wed July 15, 2020
Have 3D glasses? You can view these stereo images that reveal the distance of the stars from their backgrounds, as seen by New Horizons. On the left is Proxima Centauri and on the right is Wolf 359.
The newly renamed object Arrokoth, once known as Ultima Thule, is ultrared, smooth and covered in organic complex molecules. New Horizons flew past the distant Kuiper Belt Object on January 1, 2019.
New Horizons images revealed that craters on Pluto and Charon were made by small Kuiper Belt objects.
When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in July 2015, it captured this image of the major mountain ranges where it meets a vast icy plain called Sputnik Planitia. The ridges in these photos have now been identified as dunes made of solid methane ice grains.
New Horizons photographed what scientists are calling "bladed" terrain near the heart-shaped region of the dwarf planet. This 3-D image was created using two images taken about 14 minutes apart on July 14. The first image was snapped about 16,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) from Pluto and the second was taken when the spacecraft was 10,000 miles (about 17,000 kilometers) away. Break out your 3-D glasses for the best view.
The New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic mountains that are covered in methane snow on Pluto. NASA released an image of the snow-capped mountains stretching across the dark expanse of Cthulhu on March 3.
NASA released a photo on February 4, 2015, of what it suspects is an image of floating hills on Pluto's surface. The hills are made of water ice and are suspended above a sea of nitrogen.
This image made in infrared light shows water ice is abundant on Pluto's surface. The image was created using two scans of Pluto made by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, when the probe was about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) above Pluto.
This image shows the layered interior walls of the planet's many craters. According to NASA, "layers in geology usually mean an important change in composition or event." However, NASA says the New Horizons team members do not know if they are seeing local, regional or global layering.
Most of the craters seen here lie within the 155-mile (250-kilometer)-wide Burney Basin. Learn more at NASA's website.
This image shows how erosion and faulting has sculpted Pluto's icy crust into rugged badlands. The prominent 1.2-mile-high cliff at the top is part of a great canyon system that stretches for hundreds of miles across Pluto's northern hemisphere, NASA says. Learn more at NASA.gov.
Pluto's largest moon, Charon, in seen in enhanced color in this image taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. The space probe took the image just before it made its closest approach on July 14. The image combines blue, red and infrared images to best highlight the moon's surface features. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across. The image was released on October 1.
Images from two instruments on New Horizons are combined in this photo to show Charon's cratered uplands at the top and a series of canyons. The bottom of the image shows rolling plains.
This composite of enhanced color images shows the striking differences between Pluto, lower right, and its largest moon, Charon. NASA says the color and brightness of the two worlds have been processed identically to allow for direct comparison. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale.
These photos show Pluto's variety of textures, including what NASA calls "rounded and bizarrely textured mountains." The mountains are informally called the Tartarus Dorsa. This image shows about 330 miles (530 kilometers) of Pluto's terrain. It combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the space probe's Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera. The images were taken on July 14, during the probe's flyby. They were released on September 24.
The photos taken by New Horizons just before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14 are the sharpest images to date of Pluto's varied terrain. This high-resolution image reveals details of two ice mountains. The image spans 75 miles (120 kilometers) of Pluto's surface.
This image of the surface of Pluto was taken just 15 minutes after NASA's New Horizon spacecraft made its closest approach to the icy planet on July 14. As it looked toward the Sun, the spacecraft's camera captured more than dozen thin layers of haze in Pluto's atmosphere, at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. The photo was downlinked to Earth on September 13.
This image of Pluto's icy and mountainous landscapes was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers). "This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.
This picture is a synthesis of new high-resolution images downlinked from New Horizons. The broad icy plains have been nicknamed Sputnik Planum. This image is from a perspective above Pluto's equatorial area. Astronomers began downlinking a data dump from the space craft over Labor Day weekend, September 5 to 7.
Scientists say that what looks like mountains could be huge blocks of frozen water suspended in frozen nitrogen. On the new photos, taken on July 14 and released on September 10, a pixel is 400 meters (440 yards). New Horizons' closest pass by Pluto took it about 50,000 miles from the surface.
Pluto's landscape has lots of variety: plains, mountains, craters and what looks like they might be dunes. The smallest details on the photos are about half a mile wide. The area with the craters is ancient, scientist say. The smooth frozen planes are relatively young.
Just before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft snapped this photo of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. The photo was shot at a distance of 290,000 miles away. Charon's north pole region is markedly dark. This photo was released on September 10.
This new image of Pluto is stunning planetary scientists. It shows the small world's atmosphere, backlit by the sun. NASA says the image reveals layers of haze that are several times higher than predicted. The photo was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft seven hours after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14. New Horizons was about 1.25 million miles from Pluto at the time.
Images taken of Pluto's heart-shaped feature, informally named Tombaugh Regio, reveal a "vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old," NASA said July 17. The frozen region "is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes." NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 and traveled 3 billion miles to the dwarf planet.
Close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator revealed a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains. NASA released the image on July 15.
Remarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are revealed in this image released on July 15.
The latest spectra analysis from New Horizons' Ralph instrument was released on July 15. It reveals an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.
NASA team members and guests count down to the spacecraft's approach to Pluto on July 14.
This image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles from Pluto's surface.
The colors in this image of Pluto and Charon are exaggerated to make it easy to see their different features. (These are not the actual colors of Pluto and Charon, and the two bodies aren't really that close together in space.) This image was created on July 13, one day before New Horizons was to make its closest approach to Pluto.
This image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on July 12. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles from Pluto at the time.
New Horizons snapped this photo of Charon on July 12. It reveals a system of chasms larger than the Grand Canyon. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles away when the image was taken.
New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles from Pluto and Charon when it took this image on July 8.
Do you see a heart on Pluto? This image was taken on July 7 by New Horizons when it was about 5 million miles from the planet. Look to the lower right, and you'll see a large bright area -- about 1,200 miles across -- that resembles a heart.
New Horizons took six black-and-white photos of Pluto and Charon between June 23 and 29. The images were combined with color data from another instrument on the space probe to create the images above. The spacecraft was 15 million miles away when it started the sequence and 11 million miles when the last photo was taken.
Pluto is shown here along with Charon in images taken on June 25 and 27. The image on the right shows a series of evenly spaced dark spots near Pluto's equator. Scientists hope to solve the puzzle as New Horizons gets closer to Pluto.
New Horizons took a series of 13 images of Charon circling Pluto over the span of 6½ days in April. As the images were being taken, the spacecraft moved from about 69 million miles from Pluto to 64 million miles.
Look carefully at the images above: They mark the first time New Horizons has photographed Pluto's smallest and faintest moons, Kerberos and Styx. The images were taken from April 25 to May 1.
New Horizons used its color imager to capture this image of Pluto and Charon on April 9. This was the first color image taken by a spacecraft approaching Pluto and Charon, according to NASA. The spacecraft was about 71 million miles away from Pluto when the photo was taken.
In August 2014, New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune, the last planet it would pass on its journey to Pluto. New Horizons took this photo of Neptune and its large moon Triton when it was about 2.45 billion miles from the planet -- more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and our sun.
New Horizons captured this image of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io in early 2007.
On its way to Pluto, New Horizons snapped these photos of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons. From left is Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
A white arrow points to Pluto in this photo taken in September 2006 from New Horizons. The spacecraft was still about 2.6 billion miles from Pluto.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 but was only a speck of light in the best telescopes on Earth until February 2010, when NASA released this photo. It was created by combining several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope -- each only a few pixels wide -- through a technique called dithering. NASA says it took four years and 20 computers operating continuously to create the image.
This was one of the best views we had of Pluto and its moon Charon before the New Horizons mission. The image was taken by the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope on February 21, 1994.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx.
New Horizons launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. It has seven instruments on board to take images and sample Pluto's atmosphere. After it completes its five-month study of Pluto, the spacecraft will keep going deeper into the Kuiper Belt.
New Horizons explores Pluto, Arrokoth
CNN —
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto five years ago this week, it captured detailed views of the mysterious icy dwarf planet on the edge of our solar system.
Since then, data gathered about Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, have been used to gain insight about these planetary bodies 4 billion miles away from Earth.
New Horizons launched in January 2006 and reached Pluto in July 2015, flying within 7,800 miles of Pluto’s surface.
The stunning images shared by New Horizons showed both “Earth-like characteristics” on the surface as well as alien landscapes and geology not seen anywhere else in our solar system.
And rather than being a quiet, frozen dwarf planet, data gathered by New Horizons revealed that Pluto is actually very active.
New Horizons has entirely changed the way scientists understand Pluto and data from the mission is continuing to help researchers unravel secrets about the distant dwarf planet, as well as icy objects orbiting along the edge of our solar system.
“New Horizons transformed Pluto from a fuzzy, telescopic dot into a living world with stunning diversity and surprising complexity,” said Hal Weaver in a statement.
Weaver is the New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which designed, built and operates the spacecraft.
“The Pluto encounter was exploration at its finest, a real tribute to the vision and persistence of the New Horizons team,” he said.
New Horizons’ revelations
Pluto is tiny but mighty, smaller than our moon and only about 1,400 miles wide, or half the width of the United States. Charon, the largest of Pluto’s five moons, is so similar in size to Pluto that they orbit each other like a double planet system.
If you were to stand on the surface of Pluto, which has an average temperature of negative 387 degrees Fahrenheit, you would see blue skies, red snow and mountains that tower like the Rockies, according to NASA. New Horizons also revealed the strange mechanics of Pluto’s “beating” heart-shaped glacier, similar in size to Texas, that explain the planet’s exaggerated tilt and even helps drive the wind on Pluto.
The heart-shaped feature is known as Tombaugh Regio, named in honor of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
Much of the dwarf planet’s nitrogen ice content can be found in this region, concentrated in a deep basin called Sputnik Planitia because the elevation is 1.9 miles lower than the surface. The ice sheet spans 620 miles. The basin makes up the “left lobe” of the heart, while the right side is home to nitrogen glaciers and highlands.
In daytime, Pluto’s frozen nitrogen heart warms enough to become vapor. By night, it’s condensing and turning to ice again. The researchers call this Pluto’s “heartbeat,” which controls atmospheric circulation of nitrogen winds around the planet.
Some scientists also believe there is a liquid ocean beneath Pluto’s ice shell that is estimated to be 249 miles thick. But they thought it formed later in Pluto’s history as radioactive elements were heated near the dwarf planet’s rocky core and decayed. This heat could have been enough to melt ice and form a subsurface ocean.
But New Horizons data suggested otherwise. New research based on that data has suggested that Pluto actually started out in a hot formation scenario. In that scenario, the liquid ocean would slowly freeze over time, although not completely, and cause the extensional faults seen by New Horizons in Pluto’s icy crust.
This long, slow freeze of the subsurface ocean could also explain the mix of features on Pluto’s surface because expansion would occur throughout the history of the dwarf planet.
New Horizons’ images of Pluto and Charon also revealed pock-marked surfaces. They’re covered in large craters.
The craters reveal that small Kuiper Belt objects less than 100 kilometers in size probably created them when they collided with Pluto and Charon. And because of what scientists know about impact crater formation, the fact that no craters were found smaller than 13 kilometers in diameter means there are fewer Kuiper Belt objects smaller than 2 kilometers than astronomers had predicted.
This provides more support for the idea that Kuiper Belt objects are not pieces of space rock formed from collisions but actual intact “leftovers” from when the solar system was forming billions of years ago.
Pluto also has other surprising features, such as dunes. But these aren’t like sand dunes on Earth; Pluto’s dunes are made from solid methane ice grains and sculpted by the wind. Within our solar system, dunes are rarer than you might think. They exist only on Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn’s moon Titan and Comet 67P.
These dunes are largely undisturbed on Pluto’s icy crust, which suggested that they were formed within the past 500,000 years – or even more recently. Pluto presents a bit of an age conundrum this way.
The dwarf planet has polygonal shapes and features that indicate the surface is geologically active and young. The surface itself is only about 500,000 years old, although the dwarf planet itself is about 4.5 billion years old. This activity is most likely caused by a thermal, convective overturning of the ice.
These are only a few of the discoveries made using data provided by New Horizons and even more will be made in the future as scientists work through the wealth of information provided by the flyby.
“It’s clear to me that the solar system saved the best for last!” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, in a statement. “We could not have explored a more fascinating or scientifically important planet at the edge of our solar system. The New Horizons team worked for 15 years to plan and execute this flyby and Pluto paid us back in spades!”
What’s next
In January 2019, New Horizons conducted the first flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt Object, which has since been named Arrokoth, allowing researchers to study these remnants of solar system formation in detail.
New Horizons continues to explore the outer reaches of our solar system, sharing its unique view of the stars billions of miles away from Earth. Meanwhile, it’s receiving some scouting help from an Earth-based telescope.
The Subaru Telescope, located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. It’s helping to search for potential target candidates for New Horizons to observe next.
“We are using the Subaru Telescope because it is the best in the world for our search purposes,” Stern said. “This is due to its unique combination of telescope size – one of the very largest anywhere, and Hyper Suprime-Cam’s wide field of view – which can discover many Kuiper Belt objects at once.”
Currently, Subaru is observing an area in the Sagittarius constellation, where New Horizons is located. The Subaru observation team expects to find hundreds of new Kuiper Belt Objects, with 50 that should be at the right distance from New Horizons to be observed.
They may find another one that is perfectly situated for a flyby, such as Arrokoth.
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