Last month the New Horizons spacecraft from NASA woke from hibernation about 135 million miles away from its destination — the dwarf planet Pluto.
Launched in January of 2006, New Horizons’s task was to take high-resolution images of Pluto and to gather data on the environment surrounding the former planet. After traveling farther from Earth than any other spacecraft, the vessel is on its final approach as crews and engineers carefully guide it for a fly-by of Pluto in the coming months. While the craft will not actually land on the surface of the planet, it will be able to take higher-resolution photos of the unexplored world than any telescope on Earth.
The remaining leg of the journey includes continual photography of the planet in order for engineers and operating teams to properly navigate the probe through space. In addition, these images will be crucial for tracking the behavior of Pluto’s moons. The first of these navigating maneuvers may occur as early as March, with a fly-by date of July. At its closest point, the craft will take images with a resolution of about 70 meters per pixel.
New Horizons is not the only probe making headlines, as another NASA spacecraft will also pass by an infamous dwarf. In March, the Dawn probe will pass Ceres, a dwarf planet located between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt. Relative to its asteroid neighbors, Ceres is enormous, yet it is too small to be named a planet. It currently holds the title for largest celestial body between the sun and Pluto not yet explored by spacecraft. That will change as Dawn makes its final approach to the dwarf and begins taking high-resolution photos of the world of ice and rock.
The photographs and data taken from both the New Horizons and Dawn missions will be very useful in mapping the surface of these previously unexplored planets and may give insight into the history of these former planets.
