Blog Archive

New Horizons LORRI view of Pluto and Charon

New Horizons: Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy

Posted by Alan Stern on 2013/08/24 09:16 CDT | 2 comments

New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!).

Pluto on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons meeting, July 2013

Dwarf planet, wassup?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/16 11:24 CDT | 4 comments

In which the fifth graders of Kipp Heartwood Academy argue the competing sides in the is-Pluto-a-planet debate through the medium of rap.

Pluto on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons: Is there an ocean, or not?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/02 08:00 CDT | 5 comments

Does Pluto have an ocean under its ice? If it doesn't now, did it ever have one? How will we know?

Pluto on the Eve of Exploration by New Horizons: Small moons, dust, surfaces, interiors

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/24 09:04 CDT | 5 comments

My roundup from notes on the day's presentations on dust in the Pluto system and the surfaces and interiors of Pluto and Charon.

Remembering the Pluto Campaign: A Success Story
The Society Worked for Years to Help Launch a Mission to Pluto

Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/07/22 02:11 CDT | 3 comments

The New Horizons mission to Pluto survived many near-death encounters with cancellation during its development. The Planetary Society worked the whole time to ensure it would launch.

Relative sizes of objects in the Pluto system represented by objects from the Saturn system

New names for Pluto's little moons Kerberos and Styx; and a new moon for Neptune

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/15 01:37 CDT | 4 comments

Pluto's moons, formerly known as "P4" and "P5," are now named Kerberos and Styx; I thought I'd help place them into context with a little help from Cassini. Also, Neptune now has a 14th known moon.

DPS 2012: Double occultation by Pluto and Charon

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/26 03:12 CDT | 5 comments

A few talks at last week's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting discussed observations of a double occultation -- both Pluto and Charon passing in front of the same star.

New Horizons workshop, day 1: Chemistry & climate on Pluto & other cold places

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/30 11:27 CDT

Today and tomorrow I'm attending the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes. The first day was all about the composition of the surface and atmosphere of Pluto, Charon, Triton, and other distant places.

Every round object in the solar system, to scale (poster for sale)

The scale of our solar system

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/05/02 11:26 CDT

Space.com has taken advantage of the infinitely scrollable nature of Web pages to produce a really cool infographic on the scales of orbital distances in the solar system.

(Almost) everything you ever wanted to know about New Horizons and Pluto

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/12/20 05:56 CST

I was browsing around the Web today looking for material to improve the information we have on our site about Pluto, and discovered that the New Horizons mission has just posted their launch press kit.