INTRODUCTION MYSTERY SOLVED An image of Pluto taken by New Horizons shows icy mountains and flat plains Nine and a half years after it blasted off from Florida’s east coast the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s NASA New Horizons spacecraft sent back the first-ever close-up images of Pluto The images showed icy mountains and carved-up plains Scientists learned about Pluto’s atmosphere its weather and its moons They discovered that Pluto may have lakes and rivers of liquid nitrogen There may even be volcanoes that erupt with frozen nitrogen Pluto has been a mystery to astronomers for years Because it is so far away much of what scientists knew about Pluto’s size orbits and surface came from theories For years scientists 4
An artist’s rendering shows New Horizons approaching Pluto thought that Pluto was probably an icy rock covered in craters But scientists at NASA wanted to know for sure about Pluto’s atmosphere moons and surroundings They wanted to finally explore this tiny world near the end of the solar system The search for answers began with a roar of smoke and fire on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on January 19 2006 On that sunny afternoon a massive rocket blasted off carrying New Horizons The spacecraft embarked on Technicians work on New Horizons in 2005
New Horizons launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket in 2006 a journey of more than 3 billion miles 4 8 billion kilometers to reach Pluto and take pictures of the dwarf planet This was the longest mission to a planet in the history of space travel New Horizons zoomed away from Earth at more than 36,000 miles 58,000 km per hour making it one of the fastest spacecraft in history Before the New Horizons launch mission lead scientist Alan Stern said the mission would be the crowning achievement of NASA’s exploration of the solar system It would also be one of the most ambitious It takes us 4 billion miles 6 billion km away and 4 billion years back in time he said When New Horizons finally reached Pluto in July 2015 the pictures it sent back stunned astronomers The information made scientists rethink much of what they had once thought about the former planet But the new information was also fascinating and exciting 6
New Horizons took this photo top from a distance of 50,000 miles 80,500 km above Pluto’s surface In the image below taken by New Horizons in 2006 during its journey a white arrow points to Pluto It’s always fun to have your models validated but it is way more fun to have them trashed said planetary scientist Randy Gladstone Finding out you are completely wrong is a great part of science 7
