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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
New Horizons releases new color pictures of Charon, high-resolution lookback photo of Pluto
Now that New Horizons is regularly sending back data, the mission is settling into a routine of releasing a set of captioned images on Thursdays, followed by raw LORRI images on Friday. The Thursday releases give us the opportunity to see lovely color data from the spacecraft's Ralph MVIC instrument. This week, the newly available color data set covered Charon.
Lose yourself in this high-resolution portrait of Pluto
Enlarge this image to its full 8000-pixel-square glory and lose yourself in it.
Spectacular New Horizons photo of Pluto's hazes and mountains: How it was made
Today, New Horizons released a stunning new image of Pluto's backlit mountains and hazes. I explain how the image was taken with its Ralph Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera.
Roundup of the September 11, 2015 New Horizons raw image release
Last Friday the Internet received its first post-encounter pile of goodies from the New Horizons flyby of the Pluto system.
Pretty Pictures: Downlink of the Full New Horizons Data Set Has Begun
New Horizons has begun the long process of downlinking all the images it acquired during its July Pluto flyby.
Three space fan visualizations of New Horizons' Pluto-Charon flyby
It has been a difficult wait for new New Horizons images, but the wait is almost over; Alan Stern announced at today's Outer Planets Advisory Group meeting that image downlink will resume September 5. In the meantime, a few space fans are making the most of the small amount of data that has been returned to date.
New Robotic Spacecraft Posters
Another round of posters to celebrate historic planetary missions.
Looking back at Pluto
I don't think anyone was prepared for the beauty -- or the instant scientific discoveries -- in this
What in the world(s) are tholins?
The question “why is Pluto red” has been answered with a word that most people have never heard of and perhaps even fewer people can actually define—“tholins”.
New Horizons encounter plus one week: Weird and wonderful images from the Pluto system
So many new image goodies from the Pluto system!
New Horizons: Awaiting the data
New Horizons' encounter and data downlinks have been going exactly as planned, but the raw image website has not been updated for many days. What's going on? I found out.
First look at New Horizons' Pluto and Charon images: "baffling in a very interesting and wonderful way"
Today's press briefing at the Applied Physics Laboratory in California was preceded by hours of New Horizons team members cryptically dropping hints on Twitter at astonishing details in the seven images downlinked since the flyby. The images are, in fact, astonishing, as well as beautiful, surprising, and puzzling.
New Horizons' best look at Pluto before close approach
Feast your eyes upon it!
The not-planets
Now that I have a reasonable-resolution global color view of Pluto, I can drop it into one of my trademark scale image montages, to show you how it fits in with the rest of the similar-sized worlds in the solar system: the major moons and the biggest asteroids.
Pluto minus one day: Very first New Horizons Pluto encounter science results
At a press briefing this morning, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern divulged some extremely preliminary first science results from the New Horizons Pluto encounter. Science results include Pluto's diameter and information on its surface composition and atmospheric escape.
Zooming in to Pluto and Charon
In the span of a few days, Pluto and Charon have turned from spots into worlds. The latest images from New Horizons are showing Pluto and Charon to have unique faces, distinct from any other icy worlds in the solar system.
Explore Pluto in Google Earth!
The Pluto encounter team is producing the first maps of Pluto using images collected by New Horizons. You can now easily download the map and explore the best Pluto maps ever made!
New Horizons is a Triumph for Space Advocates
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.
Pushing Back the Frontier: How The Planetary Society Helped Send a Spacecraft to Pluto
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 "back in action" after safe mode event, ready to resume encounter science
NASA held a press briefing today to explain the nature and cause of the spacecraft anomaly that halted science on New Horizons for four days as it was on its terminal approach to Pluto. As of the moment that I write this post, New Horizons is not yet performing science observations, but it will resume them tomorrow, July 7.