The Show on KJZZ

Listen live weekdays at 9 a.m.

NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Reveals Photos As It Draws Closer To Pluto

Published: Thursday, February 5, 2015 - 4:34pm
Updated: Monday, February 9, 2015 - 6:06pm
Audio icon Download mp3 (5.44 MB)
(NASA/JHU APL/SwRI)
The image of Pluto and its moon Charon, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, was magnified four times to make the objects more visible.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has released a kind of tease — the first photos from its Pluto mission.

You probably wouldn’t know it was Pluto by looking at it. The photo shows two white blobs in a dark sky. But those pictures will come more into focus and with higher resolution as the craft gets closer to the dwarf planet, probably by late May or early June. 

The mission launched in early 2006. Will Grundy, a planetary scientist at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff and co-investigator on the New Horizons team, said it’ll be a slow reveal of pictures.

Science The Show