This Is The First Time We’re Seeing A New Planet Up Close, But It’s Probably Our Last

NASA's New Horizons captured the image of Pluto.

By | 15 Jul 2015, 05:35 AM

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Cover ImageCover image via NASA

On 14 July 2015, spacecraft New Horizons returned a gorgeous photo of planet Pluto which was then uploaded on NASA's official Instagram account

Gorgeous Pluto! The dwarf planet has sent a love note back to Earth via our New Horizons spacecraft, which has traveled more than 9 years and 3+ billion miles. This is the last and most detailed image of Pluto sent to Earth before the moment of closest approach, which was at 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday – about 7,750 miles above the surface — roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India – making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth. This stunning image of the dwarf planet was captured from New Horizons at about 4 p.m. EDT on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles (766,000 kilometers) from the surface. Images from closest approach are expected to be released on Wednesday, July 15. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #pluto #plutoflyby #newhorizons#solarsystem #nasabeyond #science

A photo posted by NASA (@nasa) on

wired.com

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NASA said it was giving Instagram an hour-long head start on the first image, posting it to the social media site around 7am ET before officially releasing it, along with the science that explains it, on NASA.gov around 8am ET.

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At the time of writing, the photo has over 300,000 likes and 11,000 comments.

The photo was nine years and 3 billion miles (4.8 billion km) in the making. In search of Pluto, New Horizons blasted off to space in 2006.

An artist illustration of New Horizons.

An artist illustration of New Horizons.

Image via Solarviews

time.com

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New Horizons probe, which after a nine-year, 3 billion-mile (4.8 billion km) journey, just passed within 7,750 miles (12,472 km) of Pluto's frozen surface, snapping pictures and taking readings all the way. The images and the data take 4.5 hours to reach Earth even moving at light speed, and most of the time the ship has been in space it has simply been storing what it's learned in on-board computers.

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The flyby of Pluto is a key moment in the space exploration history and a huge step for mankind

Image via thetoc

bbc.com

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The photo marks the fact that all nine objects considered by many to be the Solar System's planets – from Mercury through to Pluto – have now been visited at least once by a probe.

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baltimoresun.com

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Mankind reached the farthest frontier of the solar system Tuesday morning when NASA's New Horizons became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto.

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Voted by astronomers as dwarf planet for its failure to orbit the Sun, Pluto is actually bigger than expected

theguardian.com

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Measurements from New Horizons show that it is 2,370 kilometres across, roughly two-thirds the size of Earth's moon.

Alan Stern, the lead scientist on the $700m (£450m) mission, said the increased dimensions meant Pluto must hold more ice and less rock beneath its surface than researchers had expected. Pluto has been hard to measure with any accuracy from Earth because it is so far away, and its atmosphere creates mirages that can fool ground-based telescopes.

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NASA also released two images of Pluto and its moon, Charon

Image via BBC

theverge.com

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The image was first made by taking a picture with each of the the three color filters (red, blue, and green) found on the Ralph camera. Those images were then combined and the resulting colors were enhanced. This process lets the team get a more detailed view of surface features — the false colors help scientists understand the boundaries of different geological regions.

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This is the first time we will see a planet in this generation and it could be the last too. Guess we got lucky!

vox.com

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We've been striving to explore our solar system, sending spacecraft to each of the planets in turn: Venus and Mars in the 1960s, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn in the '70s, and Uranus and Neptune in the '80s. These probes showed us entirely new worlds, revealing beautiful moons, rings, atmospheres, and landscapes.

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nytimes.com

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But the inventory of major planets — whether you count Pluto as one of those or not — is about to be done. None of us alive today will see a new planet up close for the first time again. In some sense, this is, as Alan Stern, the leader of the New Horizons mission, says, "the last picture show."

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Image via Telegraph

So what's next for New Horizons? The Kuiper Belt!

An artist illustration of the Kuiper Belt Object.

An artist illustration of the Kuiper Belt Object.

Image via spaceref

businessinsider.my

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If all went well with the planned flyby, New Horizons will soon begin the next major leg of its journey: chasing down a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) that measures at least 30 miles in diameter.

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Ever wondered how it's like to be an astronaut?

says.com

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What exactly do astronauts do when they're up in space? We dive into the life of an astronaut and what it takes to be one!

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This girl made history by being the first Malaysian to have an asteroid named after her:

says.com

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It's more than just a prestigious honour to have. It's having your name immortalised.

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