New Horizons tagged posts

IMAGE1: The latest spectra from New Horizons Ralph instrument reveal abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto. “We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light,” …In one of the visually dark equatorial patches, the methane ice has shallower infrared absorptions indicative of a different texture. “The spectrum appears as if the ice is less diluted in N…or that it has a different texture in that area.”

IMAGE2: New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise – a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet above the surface of the icy body...

After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tues, 7,750 miles above the surface – roughly the same distance from NY to Mumbai, India – making it the 1st-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.

“New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple missions orbiting and exploring the surface of Mars in advance of human visits still to come; the remarkable Kepler mission to identify Earth-like planets around stars other than our own; and the DSCOVR satellite that soon will be beaming back images of the whole Earth in near real-time from a vantage point a million miles away...