ASTRONOMY Tuesday, NASA received a particularly accurate picture of Pluto …
The New Horizons spacecraft, launched by NASA in 2006, rose Tuesday to close Pluto , a historical overview that will help to learn a lot about the dwarf planet.
Launched at over 49,300 km / h, “the New Horizons probe is placed closer to Pluto after traveling 5 billion kilometers, “said a member of the Nasa, an announcement greeted with joy technicians, their families and hundreds of guests at the premises of NASA which is managed this mission, Laurel (Maryland, is), a suburb of the capital Washington.
New Horizons passed just 12,430 kilometers of Pluto at exactly 1:49 p.m. .
Image thousand times more accurate
“There are 50 years the United States today entered a new era of exploration of the solar system. There are 50 years old the first space probe flew over Mars, it is particularly appropriate that on this day we managed to fly Pluto “noted Alan Stern one of the main engineers working on this project at $ 700 million.
During a New Horizons few hours window should store a maximum of images and information on the planet known yet little. The probe will then continue its road to observe the Kuiper Belt, a vast pile of debris beyond the orbit of Neptune.
The probe has seven instruments of high performance measures. It must scan the surface of Pluto , analyze the composition of its atmosphere, its geology, raise the temperature on its surface and take pictures
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New information on Pluto expected soon
Unfortunately New Horizons, which is the size of a piano is not able to communicate simultaneously it performs its analyzes. Scientists from NASA will have to wait until the end of the day to receive a first signal transmitted by the device confirming that everything went as planned.
Early Tuesday, before the probe only cuts communications for the day, NASA received a particularly accurate picture of Pluto , to the delight of scientists. “This is the best picture we have at this moment. It has a resolution of 4 km per pixel, which is about 1,000 times more accurate than what we can do with the best telescopes here on Earth, “said Alan Stern.
” From Wednesday should see more and more about Pluto As the information transmitted by the probe will happen, “he anticipates again. Thanks to the data sent by the probe in recent days, researchers have already been able to confirm the presence of ice on the poles, have refined the measurements on the exact size of the dwarf planet and observed extraordinary forms on its surface.
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