We all know how common sand dunes are on Earth – just go to practically any desert region to see them in their various shapes and sizes. Thanks to robotic space explorers, we also know they exist elsewhere in the Solar System, including Mars, Venus, …
Happy New Year! As well as simply the start of a new year, today also marks another significant date – exactly one year from now, the New Horizons spacecraft will encounter its next target deep in the Kuiper Belt, much farther out than Pluto. On …
Read MorePluto and beyond: New Horizons’ next Kuiper Belt rendezvous only one year away
Pluto is an intriguing little world, full of geological surprises, as New Horizons revealed back in 2015. This cold, remote body was expected to be pretty much inactive, but instead we saw a place with nitrogen ice “seas” and glaciers, tall mountains of water ice, …
Read More‘Penitentes on steroids’: Scientists solve enigma of Pluto’s massive ice blades
In 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft provided our first up-close look at Pluto and its moons, helping to transform our knowledge about these small, cold worlds in the outer fringes of the Solar System. The only downside, if there were one even, was that it …
Read More‘Hopping around’ on Pluto? Exciting lander mission concept presented at NASA symposium
It was two years ago today that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first-ever probe to visit Pluto in the cold, outer fringes of the Solar System. To help celebrate the occasion, NASA has posted a new video of the epic flyby, when the spacecraft soared over the tall mountains and vast icy plains of this small but active world.
Read MoreFly over Pluto and Charon for second anniversary of New Horizons’ historic visit
With the Pluto flyby now well behind them, the New Horizons team has been busy preparing for the next encounter, the small Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. New Horizons is scheduled to fly past 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019, and it will be the farthest Solar System body to ever be visited so far. From June 2-3, astronomers in Argentina and South Africa pointed their telescopes at 2014 MU69, hoping to catch its “shadow” moving across a background star as it transited the star (also known as a stellar occultation). This would help determine the object’s exact size and allow the mission team to fine-tune the planned flyby. Back at Pluto, there is more evidence, from data gathered by New Horizons during the flyby, for clouds in Pluto’s thin atmosphere.
Read MoreNew Horizons team successfully observes transit of next KBO target, and clouds on Pluto!
It may not seem like it, but it is approaching two years now since New Horizons made its historic flyby of Pluto and its moons in July 2015. But even though it has been quiet since then, the mission continues, as the spacecraft is now preparing for its next flyby of another Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) on Jan. 1, 2019 – and now New Horizons has reached the halfway point between Pluto and the next target, called 2014 MU69. It’s another major milestone for a mission that gave us our first close-up views of the Pluto system, and revealed worlds utterly alien and unique in the Solar System.
Read MoreNew Horizons reaches halfway point between Pluto and next KBO target