Artist view Pluto and its moon Charon. – Seti Institute

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On the way to Pluto. Launched 9 years ago by NASA’s New Horizons probe now has “free way” to perform on July 14 a historical overview of the dwarf planet *. Having scanned the area since mid-May, the New Horizons team concluded Wednesday that the ship could remain on the deemed optimum trajectory for the planned observations

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In fact, the ship ahead to 49,600 km / h to the mysterious dwarf planet and its five moons. At that speed, even a large debris like a grain of sand can be catastrophic for the probe, officials explain the mission.



A journey of 5 billion kilometers to reach its destination

“We all breathed a sigh of relief by finding that the coast was clear,” said Jim Green, the head of Planetary Sciences within the US space agency. He added: “We will collect more data (images and other measures) keeping the original path,” he added. Note that a change should have been made on or before July 4.

“The fact of not having discovered new moons or rings of dust was a surprise,” said Alan Stern, the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the scientist in charge of the mission. The New Horizons, which was on Thursday, less than 15 million kilometers of Pluto and go as close to 12,500 kilometers on 14 July. In total, it will have traveled no less than 5 billion kilometers since the start of his journey.



Images never seen

The last images transmitted on July 2, which are in color and become clearer by the day, show two very different sides of the distant planet. On one, can be seen along the equator a series of dark spots of 480 km in diameter each, with an area equivalent to the state of Missouri and are evenly spaced.

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Such spots have never been observed, raising the greatest interest in the New Horizons science team, especially Because of the remarkable regularity of their spacing and size

* Discovered in 1930, Pluto has an atmosphere made up of nitrogen, seasons complex system of distinct geological features and consists mainly rocks and ice. The dwarf planet revolves around the sun in 247.7 years. With a diameter of 2,300 km, it is smaller than our moon and a mass 500 times lower than that of the Earth .