NASA Spacecraft Begins Fly-Bys of Pluto

New Horizons spacecraft was launched by NASA in January 2006. It has now traveled more than 3 billion miles and awaken from its hibernating state to begin its observations of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon systems. It will soon begin a fly-by close to Pluto inside the orbits of its five known moons.

Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington said that NASA’s first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind’s first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system. Needless to say a great deal of preparation has gone into this science project.

Data will be transmitted back to us in the form of images captured by New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). Not only will these pictures be used to gain a better understanding of the Pluto planetary system, but they will also be used as navigational aids to help the spacecraft travel the remaining 135 million miles to Pluto.

Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland said that we need to refine our knowledge of where Pluto will be when New Horizons flies past it. APL manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.