Tag: SWRI

  • NASA probe finally on Pluto’s doorstep

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Three billion miles and nine-and-a-half years from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons probe is racing toward a historic July 14 flyby of Pluto, providing the first close-up views of the most famous denizen of the Kuiper Belt, a vast hinterland…

  • Question time with Alan Stern, the Pluto evangelist

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    Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator, started thinking about a mission to Pluto in the 1980s. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani July is a month of rich rewards for Alan Stern, the scientist who shepherded the New Horizons spacecraft from the drawing board to Pluto, and the payoff will be sweet. New Horizons comes closest to Pluto…

  • New Horizons gets last look at Pluto’s mystery spots

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    New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager captured this view of Pluto early Saturday, July 11, at a distance of 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers). It shows mysterious dark spots along Pluto’s equatorial belt and linear features suggestive of polygonal shapes. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The New Horizons spacecraft has captured its last view of mysterious dark…

  • Pluto probe provides appetizer for next week’s flyby

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    New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015. Color data from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument was added to colorize the image. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Living up to promises that the view from New Horizons will only get better, the Pluto-bound…

  • Back in action, New Horizons returns fresh view of Pluto

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    This image of Pluto from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was received on July 8, and has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The New Horizons spacecraft speeding toward Pluto has returned a new image of the icy world lurking at the solar system’s outer frontier —…

  • New Horizons back in business after weekend scare

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    NASA released this image of Pluto on Monday. Pluto’s equator, where mysterious evenly-spaced dark terrain appears, is seen near the bottom of the dwarf planet’s disk. New Horizons’ LORRI telescopic camera took this image July 3, and scientists added color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph imager recorded earlier in the mission. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University…

  • Pluto-bound probe tweaks its trajectory

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    Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto. Credit: JHUAPL NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft fine-tuned its path toward Pluto on Tuesday, firing its rocket thrusters for 93 seconds to aim for a fleeting flyby of the distant dwarf planet July 14. The trajectory correction maneuver was successful, slowing the speed of New Horizons by…

  • New Horizons lined up for final approach to Pluto

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    Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft, Pluto and its moon Charon. Credit: JHUAPL/SwRI Pluto is in the sights of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which started collecting around-the-clock science data Thursday as it speeds toward the first close encounter with the distant world in July. The mission’s encounter phase formally started Thursday with the activation…