Related topics: nasa · spacecraft

New Horizons returns last bits of 2015 flyby data to Earth

NASA's New Horizons mission reached a major milestone this week when the last bits of science data from the Pluto flyby – stored on the spacecraft's digital recorders since July 2015 – arrived safely on Earth.

Pluto's 'heart' sheds light on a possible buried ocean

Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive ...

Shedding light on Pluto's glaciers

What is the origin of the large heart-shaped nitrogen glacier revealed in 2015 on Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft? Two researchers from the Laboratoire de météorologie dynamique (CNRS/École polytechnique/UPMC/ENS ...

Pluto 'paints' its largest moon Charon red

In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they'd never seen anything like ...

X-ray detection sheds new light on Pluto

Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made the first detections of X-rays from Pluto. These observations offer new insight into the space environment surrounding the largest and best-known object in the solar ...

New Horizons spies a Kuiper Belt companion

NASA's New Horizons is doing some sightseeing along the way, as the spacecraft speeds toward a New Year's Day 2019 date with an ancient object in the distant region beyond Pluto known as 2014 MU69.

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