NASA Releases Image of Pluto as New Horizons Arrives and Speeds Past the World

New Horizons has officially made its closest approach to the distant, tiny planet of Pluto as of 7:49 a.m. EDT this morning. Now that this historic achievement has been reached, scientists are eager to take a closer look at the data that the NASA spacecraft has collected.

Researchers have already received the most precise measurements yet of Pluto and its moon, Charon. It turns out that Pluto has a diameter that's just 18.5 percent than of Earth's at about 1,500 miles across, while Charon has a diameter that's just 9.5 percent that of Earth's.

It also appears as if Pluto isn't grey. Instead, Pluto and Charon are actually rusty red in color, similar to Mars. A composite image that New Horizons took on July 11 reveals a bit more about the final approach to the planet and the moon.

Pluto is now the most distant object ever visited by humanity. During the closest approach, New Horizons was just 7,800 miles away, which is close enough to take the first high-resolution images of Pluto's landscapes. Because of the high speeds needed to send the spacecraft to the Kuiper belt, though, New Horizons was unable to linger long near Pluto or its five moons.

The journey to Pluto took more than nine years. New Horizons actually launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas V rockets in 2006. Since then, New Horizons has traveled 2.97 billion miles to reach the dwarf planet.

"We are already seeing complex and nuanced surfaces that tell us of history of these two bodies that is beyond our wildest dreams on the science team," said Alana Stern, the mission's principal investigator, in an interview with Wired.

Already, NASA has released an image

"It's been an incredible voyage," said John Grunsfeld of NASA in a press briefing. "But what it all comes down to is an enormous team of people...this is true exploration. I'm so glad you're all here to participate in it." He went on by saying, "Pluto has turned out to be an incredibly complex and interesting world."

Currently, New Horizons is not in contact with Earth. Instead, over the next 12 to 13 hours, it will collect necessary data before transferring this data back to Earth and then continue onward to the Kuiper belt. Starting tomorrow, the scientists expect to see a "data waterfall" from New Horizons.

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