MEXICO: New Horizon, the fastest spacecraft built and launched by National Aeronautics and Space Administration is just three months away from the dwarf planet, Pluto. According to NASA, New Horizon will be the first spacecraft to take close images of Pluto.
Pluto is set to flyby Pluto and its five moons on July 14. The spacecraft will be using its cameras to snap images and its dust detectors and spectrometers to measure light and chemical properties of the said planet.
New Horizon was launched into space on January 19, 2006. Since then, it has travelled more than three billion miles to reach what used to be the farthest planet in the solar system, now known as a dwarf planet.
“Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground and Earth-orbiting space observations, but we’ve never studied Pluto up close and personal,” said John Grunsfeld, an astronaut and associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., in a statement.
At its current location, New Horizon is closer to Pluto than the sun to the Earth.
Earlier today, NASA released some of the images taken by the spacecraft. On one of the images, it shows Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.
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