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The first images of Pluto from New Horizons were acquired September 21–24, 2006, during a test of LORRI. They were released on November 28, 2006. [ 104 ] The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2 billion km (2.6 billion mi; 28 AU), confirmed the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto ...
NASA launched the New Horizon spacecraft in 2006 to learn more about the icy dwarf planet Pluto. Here are some of the first photos from that mission, taken from between 125 and 115 million miles away.
The small blurry dots in the newly-released photo are Pluto and Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons. New Horizons captured the image from 71 million miles away.
The New Horizons team had suspected that Pluto and its moon Charon might be accompanied by other moons, hence they used Hubble to search for faint moons around Pluto in 2005. [14] Since Nix's brightness is about 5,000 times fainter than Pluto, long exposure images were taken in order to find it. [15]
The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto’s surface. Lower resolution color data (at about 2,066 feet, or 630 meters, per pixel) were added to create this new image.
NASA has released a map of Pluto's surface made from images recently taken by the New Horizons probe and it includes some quite mysterious features. Particularly notable is the lightened area ...
In a soft, clear voice, she confirmed that the New Horizons spacecraft had flown within 7,800 miles of Pluto and survived. In the following days, the spacecraft transmitted images that revealed for the first time what the surface of Pluto looks like.
In June 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft captured consecutive images of the Pluto–Charon system as it approached it. The images were put together in an animation. It was the best image of Charon to that date (4). In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to the Pluto system. It is the only spacecraft to date to have ...