New Horizons spacecraft is preparing to meet with Pluto

Less than a year later, the New Horizons spacecraft will begin to come closer to Pluto. The closest approach is expected in July 2015, but the LORRI telescope will start taking pictures of the Pluto system six months earlier.

The journey to Pluto takes a long time, and this new “trailer”, filmed by the New Horizons team, tells us what it cost to launch the fastest spacecraft on a journey to Pluto, its largest satellite, Charon, and further to the Kuiper belt, 5 billion kilometers from Of the earth. The telescope of the spacecraft has been directed to the edge of our solar system for the past eight years, since its launch on January 19, 2006.


Rapprochement of New Horizons and Pluto, reconstruction (NASA / Thierry Lombri)

By the end of April 2015, the spacecraft will be so close to Pluto that it will take pictures that are superior in quality to the best, to date, images from the Hubble telescope. And in July 2015 - when New Horizons will be 10,000 km from Pluto - the cameras of the spacecraft will open a new world for us. For example, if New Horizons flew over the Earth at the same height, individual buildings and their shape would be visible in the photographs.
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As Alan Stern, the principal researcher of the New Horizons program, said: “For a long time, mankind had no experience like this — a meeting with a new planet. Everything we see on Pluto will be a revelation. ”

It is likely that during the mission, new planetary bodies can be discovered, in addition to the five already known satellites: Charon, Stix, Nikta, Kerber and Hydra.

According to Stern, “There is a real possibility that New Horizons will open new satellites and even rings. But in any case, it will be amazing. We are flying into the unknown and no one knows what we can find there. ”

See the countdown clock and learn more about the mission on the New Horizons website .