[meteorite-list] New Horizons Returns New Images of Pluto En Route to Historic Encounter

[Ron Baalke]

February 4, 2015
     
NASA Spacecraft Returns New Images of Pluto En Route to Historic Encounter

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft returned its first new images of Pluto on 
Wednesday, as the probe closes in on the dwarf planet. Although still just a 
dot along with its largest moon, Charon, the images come on the 109th 
birthday of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the distant icy world in 1930.

"My dad would be thrilled with New Horizons," said Clyde Tombaugh's 
daughter Annette Tombaugh, of Las Cruces, New Mexico. "To actually see the 
planet that he had discovered, and find out more about it -- to get to see 
the moons of Pluto-- he would have been astounded. I'm sure it would have 
meant so much to him if he were still alive today."

New Horizons was more than 126 million miles (nearly 203 million kilometers) 
away from Pluto when it began taking images. The new images, taken with New 
Horizons' telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on Jan. 25 
and Jan. 27, are the first acquired during the spacecraft's 2015 approach 
to the Pluto system, which culminates with a close flyby of Pluto and its 
moons on July 14.

"This is our birthday tribute to Professor Tombaugh and the Tombaugh 
family, in honor of his discovery and life achievements -- which truly became 
a harbinger of 21st century planetary astronomy," said Alan Stern, New 
Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in 
Boulder, Colorado. "These images of Pluto, clearly brighter and closer than 
those New Horizons took last July from twice as far away, represent our first 
steps at turning the pinpoint of light Clyde saw in the telescopes at Lowell 
Observatory 85 years ago, into a planet before the eyes of the world this 
summer."

Over the next few months, LORRI will take hundreds of pictures of Pluto, 
against a starry backdrop, to refine the team's estimates of New 
Horizons' distance to Pluto. As in these first images, the Pluto system 
will resemble little more than bright dots in the camera's view until late 
spring. However, mission navigators can still use such images to design 
course-correcting engine maneuvers to direct the spacecraft for a more 
precise approach. The first such maneuver based on these optical navigation 
images, or OpNavs, is scheduled for March 10.

"Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light," said Hal 
Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University 
Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. "LORRI has now resolved 
Pluto, and the dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the 
images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets. The new LORRI 
images also demonstrate that the camera's performance is unchanged since it 
was launched more than nine years ago."

Closing in on Pluto at about 31,000 mph, New Horizons already has covered 
more than 3 billion miles since it launched on Jan. 19, 2006. Its journey has 
taken it past each planet's orbit, from Mars to Neptune, in record time, 
and it is now in the first stage of an encounter with Pluto that includes 
long-distance imaging as well as dust, energetic particle and solar wind 
measurements to characterize the space environment near Pluto.

"The U.S. has led the exploration of the planets and continues to do so 
with New Horizons," said Curt Niebur, New Horizons program scientist at 
NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This mission will obtain images to map 
Pluto and its moons better than has ever been achieved by any previous 
planetary mission."

APL manages the New Horizons mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. Alan Stern, of SwRI, is the principal investigator and leads 
the mission. SwRI leads the science team, payload operations and encounter 
science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program, managed 
by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, 
built and operates the spacecraft.

To view the Pluto image online and see the mission timeline for upcoming 
images, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons 

and

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu 

-end-

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Michael Buckley
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
240-228-7536
michael.buckley at jhuapl.edu 

Maria Stothoff
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
210-522-3305
maria.stothoff at swri.org