Little Spacecrafts, Big Missions

New Horizons woke up last week! New Horizons is the little spacecraft on its way to Pluto. It has been flying since 2006, and will finally get to Pluto in July of 2015. Just 6 months away! 

Final assembly of New Horizons in 2006. Image Credit: NASA

We don't know what Pluto looks like, or much about its composition. New Horizons will shed some light on this dark dwarf planet. 

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken these photos of Pluto, the best we have. New Horizons will show us much more! Image Credit: HST

New Horizons is moving so fast (~47,000 mph) that it will zip by Pluto in a matter of hours. However, it has seven science instruments that will be able to get lots of data about the dwarf planet and its moons as it approaches and departs the system. Besides instruments that will gather data about Pluto's atmosphere, it has several cameras, so we will have high resolution color images for the first time. This will be exciting on a purely exploratory level - getting to see something we have never seen before - but will also help planetary scientists learn much more about Pluto's geography, composition, and formation. New Horizons will be at closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Check out this blog from the Planetary Society for a detailed explanation of the mission. 

New Horizons took these images, put together in a movie, of Pluto and its moon Charon in July of 2014. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

After it leaves Pluto behind, New Horizons will study another object in the Kuiper Belt, the belt of icy asteroids that Pluto is part of.

Pluto will not be the first dwarf planet imaged up close, however. It will be beaten by a few months by Dawn at Ceres. Dawn will fall into orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres (located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) in March of 2015. We will learn much more about the composition of this little world. Soon, it will be able to take much better pictures of Ceres than we are able to get with the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. 

Dawn's first view of Ceres indicates that the dwarf planet is round. This is exciting to planetary geologists, because it means Ceres had to have enough gravity to pull the material into a round shape. Image Credit: NASA / JPL / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

Dawn already spent a year and three months orbiting the protoplanet/asteroid Vesta. Here are some lovely images: 

Vesta. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA 

"Snowman" craters on Vesta. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/
UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/
UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/
UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/
UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Full view of Vesta, taken as Dawn departed for Ceres in September 2012. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA

Studying dwarf planets will help scientists better understand the formation of our Solar System. They are relics from the young Solar System, when objects were colliding and forming larger objects all the time. 2015 will be a pretty exciting year for planetary science! 

Visit the Dome Planetarium at the Peoria Riverfront Museum to learn more about space and science! Find our full schedule and show descriptions here.