A countdown. On Tuesday, July 14 at 1:49 p.m. Spanish time and nine years after leaving Earth, the NASA New Horizons spacecraft will reach the dwarf planet Pluto, located on the border, for the first time in human history. of our solar system.
As New Horizons is a flyby and non-orbital space probe, it will not stop or land on Pluto, but will fly over it with its 480 kilograms of weight at more than 50,000 km / h , at which time the instruments are pre-programmed to take Photographs and measurements of the dwarf planet as well as its moons. The closest distance of the dwarf planet to the probe will be about 12,500 kilometers , undoubtedly the closest it has ever been to Pluto. Another moment in the history of space exploration.
Thanks to the latest New Horizons zoom, we can confirm that Pluto is 80 kilometers wider than previously thought and also 2,370 kilometers wider in diameter . The new images of Pluto after this historic moment will arrive on July 15, but New Horizons will remain in the Pluto system for 12 days , enough time to collect a large amount of information and data that it will send regularly if there is no collision. unforeseen and survives the approach in good condition.
From NASA they report that we can all follow the trajectory of the ship live through the internet from the television website of the American agency and also through social networks: Facebook or Twitter, with the hashtag #PlutoFlyBy.
