NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Lands On Icy Pluto, Seen On Video

First Posted: Jul 18, 2016 04:35 AM EDT
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New Horizons spacecraft explored the Pluto system last July 14, 2015. It's been a year of this much-awaited encounter of NASA with the icy Pluto.

Today, NASA has released a video that captures the images of Pluto's heart. The New Horizons scientists produced this video. It took shots of more than 100 images of Pluto and offers a trip to Pluto.

Alan Stern, the New Horizons Principal Investigator said that just over a year ago, Pluto was just a dot in the distance and that this video shows what it would be like to ride aboard an advancing spacecraft and see Pluto grow to become the world, and then to swoop down over its spectacular terrains as if you were approaching some future landing.

The 9.5-year voyage of New Horizons spacecraft covered about more than three billion miles, coming within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto. It carried powerful telescopic cameras and it brought back hundreds of images of Pluto and its moons, according to NASA.

NASA stated that the surface of Pluto, which is informally named Sputnik Planum, is a massive ice plain larger than Texas. It is devoid of any visible craters and estimated to be geologically young--no more than ten million years old, as noted by Wired.


Pluto is about 21 degrees colder than Earth, according to studies. This means that less of Pluto's atmosphere is being whipped away by the solar winds than was believed. It also has methane rather than nitrogen. There was also a discovery of cryo-volances and smooth plains and the mountains of Pluto are also covered with methane "snow." The mountain tops in the Cthulu region are covered with a material called methane ice.

Constantine Tsang, a New Horizons scientist at SwRI said that the challenge in producing this movie is to make it feel like you're diving into Pluto. She further said that it is certainly fun to see this and think what it would feel like to approach a landing on Pluto.

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

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