After a long flight, NASA's New Horizons is beginning its approach to Pluto, according to information released jointly by NASA and Johns Hopkins University. In six months, the journey that launched in 2006 will crescendo with the first fly-by of the Plutonian system.
"NASA's first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind's first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The New Horizons team worked very hard to prepare for this first phase, and they did it flawlessly."
The piano-sized New Horizons has flown over 3 billion miles. The spacecraft is expected to be inside the orbit of Pluto's five moons by July 14, but a long-range photo shoot will begin Jan. 25 using Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). New Horizons has 135 million miles to reach Pluto.
"We've completed the longest journey any craft has flown from Earth to reach its primary target, and we are ready to begin exploring!" said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Co.
The long-range photos aren't just for our eager and curious minds. They will also help New Horizons orientate itself for the planetary approach. "We need to refine our knowledge of where Pluto will be when New Horizons flies past it," said Mark Holdridge, the New Horizons encounter mission manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "The flyby timing also has to be exact, because the computer commands that will orient the spacecraft and point the science instruments are based on precisely knowing the time we pass Pluto -- which these images will help us determine."
Watch an animation of New Horizons' flight path here:
