After several failed mission concepts, JPL and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory engineers and scientists moved ahead with New Horizons; however, its mission had several limitations that had to be taken into consideration. New Horizons only had nine minutes to take the best, most focused photos of Pluto – that’s like hitting a golf…
Pluto and its moons hold many secrets that New Horizons discovered through Alice – its sensitive ultraviolet imaging spectrometer. Instruments have detected an atmospheric haze which could contain methane. Pluto Underground team has created a unique spacecraft designed to investigate this mystery. The Mission As New Horizons will pass Pluto this Wednesday, astronomers will finally…
On 14 July 2015, New Horizons made an epic journey through Pluto’s system and returned spectacular images showing an icy world with towering water-ice mountains and vast plains of frozen nitrogen. From concept to launch day – and multiple nearly cancelled attempts along the way – took a difficult 17 years. How does it work?…
In 1991, the United States Postal Service released a set of stamps depicting each planet and noting which spacecraft had explored it. Pluto’s stamp featured an artist’s rendition of an uninhabitable planet with no features and the words: “NOT YET EXPLLORED.” New Horizons successfully reached Pluto and discovered that its moons Charon, Nix, Hydra and…
Stern and his team struggled for years to launch their mission, facing an intense race against time: only four years were available for designing, launching and reaching Jupiter for gravity assistance. New Horizons would likely make its first encounter with Pluto and Charon during its trek through the Kuiper Belt – an outer region of…
The Planetary Society battled hard for New Horizons mission’s successful launch to Pluto. When its flyby of this classic solar system planet and its four tiny moons Styx, Nix, Hydra and Kerberos took place in July 2015 it revolutionized our understanding of this classic world. Scientists are still processing the wealth of data New Horizons…
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, boasting its Great Red Spot that nearly covers as much surface area as our own planet! People typically calculate which planet comes closest to Earth in size by subtracting their average distances from the Sun; however, due to the nature of elliptical orbits, which one actually…
The solar system planets vary significantly in color due to the composition of their surfaces and atmospheres and how these absorb and reflect light. Earth, Venus, Mars and Jupiter each feature unique hues; Uranus and Neptune all share similar attributes as well. Earth Our solar system’s planets take on their colors based on various factors….
The Solar System consists of the Sun and eight planets, plus their moons, along with asteroids and other minor planets. It formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. The process of planetary formation is fairly straightforward. It is likely that the gas and dust in the solar nebula…
