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
Looking Back at MU69
Emily Lakdawalla • February 08, 2019
A crescent view of MU69 reveals its bizarre shape. Let's look at lots of other fun-shaped space crescents.
Why are there no stars in most space images?
Emily Lakdawalla • January 28, 2019
Look up at space at night from a dark location and you can see innumerable stars. Why, then, do photos of so many things in space show black space, devoid of stars?
A few new images of MU69
Emily Lakdawalla • January 15, 2019
New Horizons is back in action after going quiet for a period of solar conjunction following the 1 January flyby of 2014 MU69 (informally nicknamed "Ultima Thule"). The spacecraft is returning new data, as exemplified by these images.
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
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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.
Recent Images
Image usage policy: As noted on each image page. For additional publication permissions, please contact us.
Cyclonic rotation in Jupiter's south temperate belt "ghost"
A time-lapse of several images acquired on one Juno orbit demonstrates the direction of circulation around a light-hued storm in one of Jupiter's light-colored belts.
New Horizons exploration target 2014 MU69 occults a star
On July 17, 2017 at 03:50 UTC, members of the New Horizons science team successfully observed Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69 passing in front of a background star in the constellation Sagittarius. The 24 frames in this animation were separated by 0.2 seconds apiece. In each 0.2 seconds, the shadow of 2014 MU69 passed 4 kilometers across Earth's surface. Observations like these will allow the team to constrain the size and position of the New Horizons mission's flyby target, improving the precision of their encounter planning. This animation has been processed from the originally published version to reduce noise and align the star field.
Jupiter from New Horizons
On February 28, 2007, New Horizons took this picture of Jupiter with MVIC, its color imaging instrument. Due to the nature of these observations, the Red, Blue, and NIR channels were completely saturated (they appeared bright white with no detail), but the narrow-band methane channel was well-exposed. As part of some instrument calibration work, New Horizons team member Alex Parker re-processed this archival Jupiter data using the latest approaches we developed after studying the Pluto flyby data. The new processing approach results in substantial detail enhancement.
Color map of Pluto
This map contains data from New Horizons' color imager, Ralph MVIC, in a version processed about a year after the Pluto flyby. The color map shows strong variations in Pluto's color with latitude, from its orangish north to its pinkish midlatitudes to its very dark equatorial band, with Sputnik planitia sitting athwart the band.
Video
Credit: The Planetary Society