This video shows a simulation of the space environment all the way out to Pluto in the months surrounding New Horizons’ July 2015 flyby. At the time, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, worked with the New Horizons team to test how well their models—and other models contributed by scientists around the world—predicted the space environment at Pluto. Understanding the environment through which our spacecraft travel can ultimately help protect them from radiation and other potentially damaging effects. Visualizers at Goddard recently updated the movie of the model, creating this new release, December 2015.
In addition to the crescent photo, scientists with the New Horizons mission also released new information about a crater on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, that is rich in ammonia. The scientists, apparently a little too eager about the new Star Wars film, named the crater Organa. During a high-resolution infrared scan they noted high levels of absorption at wavelengths near 2.2 microns, indicating the presence of frozen ammonia. A scan of a similarly sized crater nearby—Skywalker—showed primarily water ice. Both craters are about 5km across.
Pluto mosaic made from New Horizons LORRI images taken 14 July 2015 from a distance of 80,000 km.
This view is projected from a point 1800 km above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s north pole is off the image to the left. This image mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons.
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Charon in Enhanced Color NASA’s New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers).
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Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 3,500 meters high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 18,000 kilometers to Pluto; the scene is 1,250 kilometers wide.
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