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The flyby increased New Horizons ' speed by 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph), accelerating the probe to a velocity of 23 km/s (83,000 km/h; 51,000 mph) relative to the Sun and shortening its voyage to Pluto by three years. The flyby was the center of a four-month intensive observation campaign lasting from January to June.
- January 19, 2006, 19:00:00.221 UTC
- Primary mission: 9.5 years, Elapsed: 17 years, 7 months, 29 days
- 478 kg (1,054 lb)
Jan 19, 2006 · In the fall of 2015, after its Pluto encounter, mission planners began to redirect New Horizons for a Jan. 1, 2019, flyby of 2014 MU69, a Kuiper Belt Object that is approximately 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth.
- United States of America (USA)
- New Horizons
- Pluto Flyby, Kuiper Belt Object Flyby
- 1,054 pounds (478 kilograms)
- Pluto has a “heart,” and it drives activity on the planet. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart, and Pluto seems to have taken that advice quite literally.
- There’s probably a vast, liquid, water ocean sloshing beneath Pluto’s surface. Gathered ices may not be the only thing that helped reorient Sputnik Planitia.
- Pluto may still be tectonically active because that liquid ocean is still liquid. Enormous faults stretch for hundreds of miles and cut roughly 2.5 miles into the icy crust covering Pluto’s surface.
- Pluto was—and still may be—volcanically active. But maybe not “volcanic” in the way you might think. On Earth, molten lava spits, drools, bubbles, and erupts from underwater fissures through volcanoes sitting miles high in and protruding from the oceans, like on Hawaii.
Jul 14, 2015 · New Horizons’ flyby of the dwarf planet and its five known moons is providing an up-close introduction to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt, an outer region populated by icy objects ranging in size from boulders to dwarf planets. Kuiper Belt objects, such as Pluto, preserve evidence about the early formation of the solar system.
Jul 15, 2020 · News. By Mike Wall. last updated 15 July 2020. We had no idea Pluto was this diverse and dynamic. Pluto, as seen by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby of the dwarf...
Jul 14, 2020 · The NASA spacecraft's nine-day flyby of Pluto in 2015 hauled in a dataset that scientists are still mining. By Mark Zastrow | Published: July 14, 2020 | Last updated on May 18, 2023. New...
Jul 24, 2015 · Space Exploration. Missions. New Horizons Probe's July 14 Pluto Flyby: Complete Coverage. News. By Space.com Staff. published 24 July 2015. Artist's illustration of NASA's New Horizons probe in...
