NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft traveled for 9 years, 3 billion miles, at 14km per second (roughly 1.79 miles per second) around Pluto capturing the very first image today (July 13) at 4 p.m. (E.D.T.) at 476,000 miles from Pluto’s surface. The closest and most detailed image was photographed later this morning at 7:49 a.m.
NASA’s live briefing on NASA TV began 8 a.m. today at NASA TV, and the high resolution photo will be posted at NASA.gov with more coverage on NASA TV throughout the day.
Pluto is the second-most massive direct orbit of the Sun in the Solar System and ninth largest (tenth-most massive) known object directly orbiting the Sun. Eight planets orbit the sun, listed in order closest to the Sun: Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Once classified as a planet, Pluto, is now classified as a dwarf planet or plutoid.
@NASANewHorizons will be live-tweeting beginning this morning using the hashtag #plutoflyby. Other hashtags include #nasa #pluto #plutoflyby #newhorizons #solarsystem #nasabeyond #science
As of 8:25 a.m, there are currently over 90.5K likes and over 3,500 comments on NASA’s Instagram.
• How Big Is Pluto? New Horizons, NASA’s Mission to Pluto
• Pluto will send earth a love letter tomorrow, WIRED
• Pluto on Wikipedia
• The New Horizons Pluto mission is a big deal. Here are 7 reasons why.