New Horizons Videos
NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has traversed the orbit of
Neptune. This is its last major crossing en route to becoming the first probe to
make a close encounter with distant Pluto on July 14, 2015.
The sophisticated piano-sized spacecraft, which launched in January 2006,
reached Neptune’s orbit -- nearly 2.75 billion miles from Earth -- in a record
eight years and eight months. New Horizons’ milestone matches precisely the 25th
anniversary of the historic encounter of NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft with
Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.
NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft captured
this view of the giant planet Neptune and its large moon Triton on July 10,
2014, from a distance of about 2.45 billion miles (3.96 billion kilometers) -
more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and sun.
Image Credit:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory
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“It’s a cosmic coincidence that connects one of NASA’s iconic past outer
solar system explorers, with our next outer solar system explorer,” said Jim
Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in
Washington. “Exactly 25 years ago at Neptune, Voyager 2 delivered our ‘first’
look at an unexplored planet. Now it will be New Horizons' turn to reveal the
unexplored Pluto and its moons in stunning detail next summer on its way into
the vast outer reaches of the solar system.”
New Horizons now is about 2.48 billion miles from Neptune -- nearly 27 times
the distance between the Earth and our sun -- as it crosses the giant planet’s
orbit at 10:04 p.m. EDT Monday. Although the spacecraft will be much farther
from the planet than Voyager 2’s closest approach, New Horizons' telescopic
camera was able to obtain several long-distance “approach” shots of Neptune on
July 10.
“NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system
where the giant planets orbit,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal
investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Now we
stand on Voyager’s broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and
mysterious Pluto system.”
Several senior members of the New Horizons science team were young members of
Voyager’s science team in 1989. Many remember how Voyager 2’s approach images of
Neptune and its planet-sized moon Triton fueled anticipation of the discoveries
to come. They share a similar, growing excitement as New Horizons begins its
approach to Pluto.
“The feeling 25 years ago was that this was really cool, because we’re going
to see Neptune and Triton up-close for the first time,” said Ralph McNutt of the
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland,
who leads the New Horizons energetic-particle investigation and served on the
Voyager plasma-analysis team. “The same is happening for New Horizons. Even this
summer, when we’re still a year out and our cameras can only spot Pluto and its
largest moon as dots, we know we’re in for something incredible ahead.”
Voyager’s visit to the Neptune system revealed previously unseen features of
Neptune itself, such as the Great Dark Spot, a massive storm similar to, but not
as long-lived, as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Voyager also, for the first time,
captured clear images of the ice giant’s ring system, too faint to be clearly
viewed from Earth. “There were surprises at Neptune and there were surprises at
Triton,” said Ed Stone, Voyager’s long-standing project scientist from the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “I’m sure that will continue at
Pluto.”
Many researchers feel the 1989 Neptune flyby -- Voyager’s final planetary
encounter -- might have offered a preview of what’s to come next summer.
Scientists suggest that Triton, with its icy surface, bright poles, varied
terrain and cryovolcanoes, is a Pluto-like object that Neptune pulled into
orbit. Scientists recently restored Voyager’s footage of Triton and used it to
construct the best global color map of that strange moon yet -- further whetting
appetites for a Pluto close-up.
“There is a lot of speculation over whether Pluto will look like Triton, and
how well they’ll match up,” McNutt said. “That’s the great thing about
first-time encounters like this -- we don’t know exactly what we’ll see, but we
know from decades of experience in first-time exploration of new planets that we
will be very surprised.”
Similar to Voyager 1 and 2's historic observations, New Horizons also is on a
path toward potential discoveries in the Kuiper Belt, which is a disc-shaped
region of icy objects past the orbit of Neptune, and other unexplored realms of
the outer solar system and beyond.
“No country except the United States has the demonstrated capability to
explore so far away,” said Stern. “The U.S. has led the exploration of the
planets and space to a degree no other nation has, and continues to do so with
New Horizons. We’re incredibly proud that New Horizons represents the nation
again as NASA breaks records with its newest, farthest and very capable
planetary exploration spacecraft.”
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977, and one of the
spacecraft visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 now is the
most distant human-made object, about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers)
away from the sun. In 2012, it became the first human-made object to venture
into interstellar space. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated
spacecraft, is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our
sun.
New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program. APL
manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
APL also built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.
The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Voyager missions are part of
NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division
of the Science Mission Directorate.
To view the Neptune images taken by New Horizons and learn more about the
mission, visit:
For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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