During its flyby through the Pluto system this past Tuesday morning, the New Horizons spacecraft gathered a tremendous dataset of that will transform our understanding of this largest known Kuiper Belt Object. More images and science results will be released in a media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT this Friday, July 17. It will take 16 months to download all of the data that was collected this past week, so it should be an exciting year as more and more of this amazing planetary system is revealed.
Image of Pluto taken July 13, one day before encounter.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Mountain in a Moat on the Youthful Surface of Charon
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute