New Horizons called home around 9 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. PDT, 1 a.m. GMT Wednesday) Tuesday to tell the world it had successfully completed the historic flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto. The call – a 15-minute series of status messages – ended a very suspenseful 21-hour waiting period.
This July 13, 2015, image of Pluto is presented in false colors to make differences in surface material and features easy to see. It was obtained by New Horizons’ Ralph instrument, using three filters to obtain color information, which is exaggerated in the image. The image reveals that the bright heart-shaped region of Pluto includes areas that differ in color characteristics. The western lobe, shaped like an ice-cream cone, appears peach color in this image. A mottled area on the right (east) appears bluish. Even within Pluto’s northern polar cap, in the upper part of the image, various shades of yellow-orange indicate subtle compositional differences. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
“I know today we’ve inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come. This is a historic win for science and for exploration. We’ve truly, once again raised the bar of human potential,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
“On behalf of everyone at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, I want to congratulate the New Horizons team for the dedication, skill, creativity, and determination they demonstrated to reach this historic milestone,” said Dr Ralph Semmel, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
“We are proud to be a part of a truly amazing team of scientists, engineers, and mission operations experts from across our nation who worked tirelessly to ensure the success of this mission.”
Dr John Grunsfeld of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington added: “with the successful flyby of Pluto we are celebrating the capstone event in a golden age of planetary exploration. While this historic event is still unfolding, a new era of Solar System exploration is just beginning.”
This false-color image shows Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. The red on the dark northern polar cap of Charon is attributed to hydrocarbon materials including a class of chemical compounds called tholins. The mottled colors at lower latitudes point to the diversity of terrains on Charon. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
“Following in the footsteps of planetary exploration missions such as Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager, New Horizons has triumphed at Pluto. The New Horizons flyby completes the first era of planetary reconnaissance, a half century long endeavor that will forever be a legacy of our time,” said Dr Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, principal investigator for New Horizons.
One day before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, on July 13, the spacecraft obtained impressive new images of the dwarf planet and its large moon Charon that highlight their compositional diversity.
“These images show that Pluto and Charon are truly complex worlds. There’s a whole lot going on here. Our surface composition team is working as fast as we can to identify the substances in different regions on Pluto and unravel the processes that put them where they are,” said Dr Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory, a co-investigator for the New Horizons mission.
