NASA Celebrates New Horizons Flyby of Pluto

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and all over the world on Tuesday celebrated the culmination of a nine-year journey, as the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto.

At least, that’s what everyone is hoping.

The piano-sized spacecraft shut down its communications while it collects as much science as it can during the encounter, which NASA said was just 8,150 miles from the dwarf planet’s surface.

Around 8:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, New Horizons was to send a short, “I’m still here” message, signaling that all is going well. But it won’t start transmitting data, including more images, until much later.

The image you see above was the last taken before closest approach. The image has a stunning resolution of four kilometers per pixel, 1000 times better than images taken by our telescopes.

But at its closest, image resolution will be 70 meters per pixel, 57 times better the image above.

In other words, if you moved Central Park on to Pluto, New Horizons’ camera would be able to see the lakes from space.

It won’t be the sharpest image sent, but it will be the brightest, as New Horizons passes to the other side of Pluto, where it won’t be lit by the sun.

New Horizons left Earth in early 2006, before Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status by scientists later that August. It has been sending back the best views of Earth we have ever seen, and the images will only get sharper.

Image via NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute