New Horizons NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
March 14, 2023 NASA’s New Horizons Team Discusses Discoveries from the Kuiper Belt
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March 18, 2019 Revealing the First Primordial Planetesimal
January 3, 2019 The Ultima Thule Flyby
January 2, 2019 First Results
January 1, 2019 Spacecraft status, latest images and data download schedule
December 31, 2018 New Horizons Spacecraft Homing in on Kuiper Belt Target
October 24, 2018 New Horizons Team Previews Ultima Thule Flyby American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting
December 12, 2017 New Horizons Explores the Kuiper Belt American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting
October 18, 2016 NASA's New Horizons Mission: Discoveries on Pluto and Worlds Beyond AAS Division for Planetary Sciences and European Planetary Science Congress
March 21, 2016 New Horizons: Peering into Pluto's Past Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
November 9, 2015 Science Results from the New Horizons Encounter with Pluto 47th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting
July 24, 2015 New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto
April 29, 2015 NASA's New Horizons Detects Surface Features, Possible Polar Cap on Pluto
April 14, 2015 NASA's New Horizons Nears Historic Encounter with Pluto
April 29, 2015
NASA Briefing
For the first time, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto – the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.
The images were captured in early to mid-April from within 70 million miles (113 million kilometers), using the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera on New Horizons. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.
“As we approach the Pluto system we are starting to see intriguing features such as a bright region near Pluto’s visible pole, starting the great scientific adventure to understand this enigmatic celestial object,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “As we get closer, the excitement is building in our quest to unravel the mysteries of Pluto using data from New Horizons.”
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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Credit: Dr. Alex H. Parker
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Science