We are pleased to provide comprehensive multimedia resources to support your New Horizons reporting process. Please find and use the following resources in our digital media kit: articles, biographies, video, high-resolution photography for print and online purposes, and background information.
In addition to these resources, interviews with Planetary Society spokespeople are available upon request. To schedule an interview, or to be added to our media mailing list, please contact our Director of Communications Erin Greeson at [email protected] or +1-626-793-5100.
All press materials are provided by The Planetary Society, unless otherwise credited.
Press Releases/Media Alerts
Bill Nye and The Planetary Society Celebrate New Horizons Pluto Flyby (July 13, 2015)
Nearly ten years after its launch, the New Horizons spacecraft will reach its closest encounter with Pluto on July 14, 2015. NASA and the world science community will celebrate the landmark at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University, as well as at “PlutoPalooza” events around the world.
Flyby Schedule
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
Three months ago, I posted an article explaining what to expect during the flyby. This is a revised version of the same post, with some errors corrected, the expected sizes of Nix and Hydra updated, and times of press briefings added.
Latest Articles
Some big moons in the Kuiper belt
Emily Lakdawalla • January 25, 2018
In a new preprint, Mike Brown and Bryan Butler show evidence that two Kuiper belt moons are even bigger than we used to think. They are Eris' moon Dysnomia, and Orcus' moon Vanth.
New Horizons prepares for encounter with 2014 MU69
Emily Lakdawalla • January 24, 2018
Throughout 2018, New Horizons will cruise toward its January 1 encounter with 2014 MU69. Preparations for the flyby are nearly complete.
Explore spinnable Saturn and Jupiter moons with Google Maps
Emily Lakdawalla • October 27, 2017
Google Maps released several new map products that allow you to see the locations of named features on many solar system planets and non-planets, spinning them around in space with your mouse.
Mission History & Advocacy
Pushing Back the Frontier: How The Planetary Society Helped Send a Spacecraft to Pluto
Posted by Jason Davis
It took 16 years and five spacecraft designs to get a mission to Pluto. The Planetary Society was there through it all, always striving to help NASA push back our solar system's frontier.
New Horizons is a Triumph for Space Advocates
Posted by Casey Dreier
New Horizons—what will be NASA’s greatest success of 2015—was cancelled multiple times in its early life, and many times before that in its previous incarnations. A mission to Pluto was not inevitable, despite the overwhelming scientific and public excitement.
Staff Biographies
Casey Dreier
Casey is the public face of The Planetary Society's efforts to advance planetary exploration, planetary defense, and the search for life. He is a trusted expert in space policy and works to demystify the political and policy processes behind space exploration.
Emily Lakdawalla
Emily Lakdawalla is an internationally admired science communicator and educator, passionate about advancing public understanding of space and sharing the wonder of scientific discovery.
Bill Nye
Bill Nye isn't just the Science Guy—he's a Planetary Society charter member and has been The Planetary Society's CEO since 2010.High Resolution Images
Image usage policy: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. For additional publication permissions, please contact us. Click thumbnails to enlarge.
Bill Nye
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye
F. Scott Schafer
Recent Images
Image usage policy: As noted on each image page. For additional publication permissions, please contact us.
Zigzagging across Pluto
This high-resolution swath of Pluto sweeps over the cratered plains at the west of the New Horizons’ encounter hemisphere and across numerous prominent faults, skimming the eastern margin of the dark, forbidding region informally known as Cthulhu Regio, and finally passing over the mysterious, possibly cryovolcanic edifice Wright Mons, before reaching the terminator or day-night line. Among the many notable details shown are the overlapping and infilling relationships between units of the relatively smooth, bright volatile ices from Sputnik Planum (at the edge of the mosaic) and the dark edge or “shore” of Cthulhu. The pictures in this mosaic were taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) in “ride-along” mode with the LEISA spectrometer, which accounts for the ‘zigzag’ or step pattern. Taken shortly before New Horizons’ July 14, 2015 closest approach to Pluto, details as small as 500 meters can be seen. (NOTE: Click on the image and ZOOM IN for optimal viewing.)
Pluto’s moon Nix, half illuminated
This recently received panchromatic image of Pluto’s small satellite Nix taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons is one of the best images of Pluto’s third-largest moon generated by the NASA mission. Taken on July 14, 2015 at a range of about 23,000 kilometers from Nix, the illuminated surface is about 19 kilometers by 47 kilometers. The unique perspective of this image provides new details about Nix’s geologic history and impact record.
MU69's crescent
New Horizons took the images for this crescent view of 2014 MU69 from a position 8,862 kilometers beyond it. To see such a thinly lit crescent so far from the Sun required long exposures, and the original images were blurred. Team members stacked 10 exposures and processed the result to remove the motion blur and present this sharp view.
Shape model for 2014 MU69
The two lobes of 2014 MU69 are roughly circular in cross-section, so the simplest assumption was that they were spherical. Following New Horizons' flyby, it became clear that they are very non-spherical. The larger lobe is extremely flat, like a hamburger, and the smaller lobe is also squashed. The blue dotted lines indicate the uncertainty in the shape estimate; it could be less flat than the figure depicts, but still very flat.
Video
Credit: The Planetary Society
