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 erin.greeson@planetary.org 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
The round worlds in the solar system: An updated graphic
Emily Lakdawalla • November 02, 2015
I have a newly updated scale comparison graphic to share: all the round worlds in the solar system smaller than 10,000 kilometers in diameter, now with added Pluto, Charon, and Ceres.
Charon in 3D
Emily Lakdawalla • October 13, 2015
Last week, the pile of New Horizons LORRI camera raw image releases included nine frames from a high-resolution mosaic on Charon. Together with the color MVIC view, they make a 3D global photo of Pluto's moon. Other recently released goodies include a global backlit color image of Pluto and the first image that resolves the tiny moon Styx.
New Horizons releases new color pictures of Charon, high-resolution lookback photo of Pluto
Emily Lakdawalla • October 02, 2015
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.
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 Head Shot Dark 2015
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye and the World 2015 (2)
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye with LightSail Model
F. Scott Schafer
Bill Nye Thinking 2015
F. Scott Schafer
Recent Images
Image usage policy: As noted on each image page. For additional publication permissions, please contact us.
Color and composition of Arrokoth
The uniform color and composition of Arrokoth’s surface shows the Kuiper Belt object formed from a small, uniform, cloud of material in the solar nebula, rather than a mishmash of matter from more separated parts of the nebula. The former supports the idea that Arrokoth formed in a local collapse of a cloud in the solar nebula.
Compositions and Densities of Solar System Worlds
The solid-surfaced worlds of the solar system are made mostly of 3 materials: iron metal, silicate rock, and water ice. They differ in their proportions of these 3 materials, in whether the materials are differentiated into layers or mixed together, and in whether the materials are in solid or molten form. Iron is denser than rock, which is denser than water. So worlds made mostly of rock and iron have high density, while those made mostly of ice and rock have low density. Some outer solar system moons, notably Jupiter's Europa and Io, are made mostly of rock and metal, just like the Moon and the terrestrial planets. Most worlds that have lots of ice probably have internal oceans of liquid water. The largest worlds, Venus and Earth, have such high internal pressure from self-gravity that their materials are compressed to higher densities than they would have at surface pressure.
Small Asteroids and Comets Visited by Spacecraft as of December 2018, in Color
A montage of 18 of the 20 asteroids and comets that have been photographed up close as of December 2018, when New Horizons flew past Arrokoth. This version is in color but does not show the bodies at their correct relative albedo or brightness. Not included are Vesta or Ceres, both of which are many times larger than Lutetia.
True Colors of Pluto
This is the most accurate natural color image of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The diversity of geologic landforms on Pluto’s surface rivals that of Mars.
Video
Credit: The Planetary Society
