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
February 13, 2020 Discovering How Planetary Building Blocks Form
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
July 24, 2015
NASA Briefing
Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.
Slide 1
Click on image to enlarge.
Pluto and Charon are shown in a composite of natural-color images from New Horizons. Images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to produce these views, which portray Pluto and Charon as an observer riding on the spacecraft would see them. The images were acquired on July 13 and 14, 2015
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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Slide 2a
Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers), twice the resolution of the single-image view taken on July 13.
Slide 2b
Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this global view of Pluto. The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).
Slide 2c
Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).
Slide 3
Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).
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Slide 4
Searching for signs of an atmosphere around Pluto’s largest moon Charon, New Horizons’ Alice instrument observed Charon passing in front of the sun—an event called an occultation—on July 14, 2015. Only a portion of the occultation data has been transmitted to Earth so far; in that limited dataset, an atmosphere has not yet been detected.
Slide 5
Backlit by the sun, atmospheric haze rings Pluto’s silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across. The image was delivered to Earth on July 23.
Slide 1a
Speeding away from Pluto just seven hours after its July 14 closest approach, the New Horizons spacecraft looked back and captured this spectacular image of Pluto’s atmosphere, backlit by the sun. The image reveals layers of haze that are several times higher than scientists predicted.
Slide 1b
Image of Pluto’s hazes; false-color inset reveals a variety of structures, including two distinct layers
Slide 1c
Slide 2
Animation showing the link between the sunlight-driven chemistry in Pluto’s upper atmosphere and the reddish-brown hydrocarbons that darken the surface
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Slide 3a
Chart indicating changes in Pluto’s surface pressure over time.
Slide 3b
Chart indicating changes in Pluto’s surface pressure, marking time of the New Horizons radio science (REX) measurements.
Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers), twice the resolution of the single-image view taken on July 13, 2015.
Within the circled region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, New Horizons Ralph instrument has detected frozen methane, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide.
This animation shows the location of a new mosaic of seven images that were acquired by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14. The mosaic covers the vast icy region informally named Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), lying within the heart-shaped feature informally named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region). Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI.
Mosaic of seven images that were acquired by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, covering the vast icy region informally named Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), lying within the heart-shaped feature informally named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region). Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI..
Image 2a
The orange rectangle shows the location of features in the north region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum.
In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.
Annotated image of the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.
The orange rectangle shows the location of features in the southern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum.
The southern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum contains newly discovered ranges of mountains that have been informally named Hillary Montes (Hillary Mountains) and Norgay Montes (Norgay Montes) for Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.
Slide 3c
Annotated image of the southern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum. The large crater highlighted in the image is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide, approximately the size of the greater Washington, DC area.
Simulated flyover of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum and Hillary Montes, created from New Horizons close approach images