With the blue Atlantic Ocean as backdrop, smoke and steam fill the launch pad, at right, as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft roars into the sky aboard an Atlas V rocket| PHOTO:NASA
Launch Information
Spacecraft: New Horizons
Launch Vehicle: Lockheed Martin Atlas V
Launch Location: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Launch Pad: Space Launch Complex 41
Launched: January 19, 2006
Launch Time: 2:00.00 p.m. EST
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have now released new images of the Pluto. In a release that was colorfully launched yesterday dabbed ‘New Horizons’, NASA unveiled a new image that shows a clear view of Pluto’s surface, covered with wide smooth areas, lumpy terrain and mountains-the finest images seen so far.
The Mission
How Pluto has come into focus over time.
The image which was released a day after the spacecraft made its closest pass over Pluto, cruising about 7,700 miles over the surface now suggest that there is more that we probably did not know about the planet that has been brought to light. For instance, scientists have always told us that Pluto’s surface is covered with nitrogen ice, methane ice and carbon monoxide ice but this latest revelation brings to the fore the existence of H20 on the surfaces of the mountains found in Pluto.
According to John Spencer, a planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, it will take about 16 months to download all of the information gathered in order to fully analyze the ice mountains on planet Pluto.
Charon
NASA has also released a full globe view of Pluto’s largest moon named Charon which was prior to this latest revelations thought to be an ancient terrain covered in craters. Besides Charon, Pluto has four other small moons namely; Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
‘The Dwarf Planet’
The spacecraft was which was used to file this findings was launched on January 19, 2006, before the big debate started over Pluto’s status as a planet,a debate that led to Pluto being reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union the same year.Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh.
Jeremiah Wakaya
Senior Editor
Real Trends Blog
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