NASA New Horizons Spacecraft Reveals Spectacular Images of Pluto

First Posted: May 28, 2015 07:29 AM EDT

The New Horizons spacecraft is drawing closer and closer to Pluto. Now, it's taken new images of the dwarf planet, revealing new details and telling scientists a bit more about the far-off world.

In this case, New Horizons took the images from just under 50 million miles away, using the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). The new images contain about twice as many pixels on the object as the images made in mid-April.

"As New Horizons closes in on Pluto, it's transforming from a point of light to a planetary object of intense interest," said Jim Green, NASA's Director of Planetary Science, in a news release. "We're in for an exciting ride for the next seven weeks."

In April, researchers determined that Pluto has broad surface markings-some bright and some dark-including a bright area at one pole that may actually be a polar cap. The newer images, though, show finer details.

"These new images show us that Pluto's differing faces are each distinct, likely hinting at what may be very complex surface geology or variations in surface composition from place to place," said Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator. "These images also continue to support the hypothesis that Pluto has a polar cap whose extent varies with longitude; we'll be able to make a definitive determination of the polar bright region's iciness when we get compositional spectroscopy of that region in July."

The images that New Horizons returns will dramatically improve in the coming weeks as the spacecraft speeds closer to its July 14 encounter with the planet. Until then the spacecraft will cover about 750,000 miles per day.

"By late June the image resolution will be four times better than the images made May 8-12, and by the time of closest approach, we expect to obtain images with more than 5,000 times the current resolution," said Hal Weaver, the mission's project scientist.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

Tagspluto, Planet, Spacecraft