New Horizons Days Away from Pluto!

After 9.5 years of flight, the fastest spacecraft ever launched is almost to Pluto. New Horizons' closest approach to the dwarf planet is July 14, Tuesday of next week. Pluto is the classic planets in our Solar System to be explored. Until this mission, we had very little idea of what Pluto looked like, but next week we will have high resolution maps of the surface! If you want to learn all about the mission and see the latest images, join our Pluto Party in the Dome Planetarium on July 14 from 10 AM - 5 PM. Read more about New Horizons below. 

New Horizons was launched in 2006, and has been speeding towards Pluto ever since. It took just 9 hours to pass the orbit of the Moon (the Apollo missions took 4 days). Right now, New Horizons is about 3 billion miles from Earth, and only about 4 million miles from Pluto. At its closest approach, it will be about 8 thousand miles from Pluto. It is moving at about 31,000 miles per hour!

Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)

Earth-based telescopes cannot take good pictures of Pluto. It is too small and too far away. However, the National Science Foundation-funded Gemini telescope was able to help pinpoint the location of the Pluto system for the New Horizons mission. This is the best picture it was able to get of Pluto, which is better than any other attempt:

Pluto and Charon. Image Credit: Gemini Observatory/NSF/NASA/AURA

New Horizons started releasing pictures of Pluto in January. The first one was about the same quality as the above image, but the spacecraft was still very far away. All the images below are credited to: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. They can be found on the New Horizons site.

Here is a color image released in April:

May: 

As New Horizons gets closer, the images get exponentially better. Here is one from June:

And here is the latest image released on July 5:

New Horizons has officially entered its flyby mode. The next couple of days are going to be very exciting as it takes better and better images, analyzes the elements found in Pluto's atmosphere, possibly discovers new moons and more! Follow the mission on Twitter @NewHorizons2015, or on Facebook for the latest news. While you are at it, follow the Dome Planetarium on Twitter @DomePlanetarium and Facebook too. Drop in to our Pluto Party for NASA giveaways, activities, to hear the latest news, and see the latest pictures on July 14!