New Horizons gives amazing insight as it flies by Pluto.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Pluto, the dog of Disney fame, just made his first cameo in space.
Scientist Amanda Zangari has discovered geological formations that join up to resemble the timeless cartoon character, according to Mashable. Dr. Zangari is a postdoctoral research fellow at Southwest Research Institute working with the New Horizons Team, the Sydney Morning Herald further revealed.
Scientists working with the New Horizons probe aren’t yet sure what those dark and light formations really are, but the spacecraft has now made its closest flyby of Pluto as of Tuesday, giving mankind its closest look at the dwarf planet ever.Follow @ambazaarmag
“We will know what they [the Pluto the dog formations] are made out of in a few days,” New Horizons deputy project scientist Leslie Young told Mashable during an interview Monday. “We are getting color and composition [information] at geological scales. We are going to get stereo of a lot of Pluto so we’ll be able to see what are mesas, what are cliffs, what are basins. Some of the pictures on the way in, are basically helping us pose the questions so the next images can give us the answers,” Young said.
The New Horizons spacecraft finally made its historic flyby of Pluto after a 9 year, 3 billion mile journey, passing within 7,750 miles of Pluto’s surface, or approximately the distance between New York and Mumbai, according to Fox News.
The flyby sparked celebrations at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which is managing the mission.
“The exploration of Pluto and its moons by New Horizons represents the capstone event to 50 years of planetary exploration by NASA and the United States,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. “The United States is the first nation to reach Pluto, and with this mission has completed the initial survey of our solar system, a remarkable accomplishment that no other nation can match.”
Launched in 2006, New Horizons passed by Jupiter in 2007 on its journey to Pluto. The fastest spacecraft ever, the probe traveled at 30,000 miles-per-hour.