How long did New Horizons closest encounter with Pluto last?

The $720 million New Horizons mission launched in January 2006, speeding away from Earth at a record-breaking 36,400 mph (58,580 km/h). Even at that blistering pace, it still took the probe 9.5 years to reach Pluto, which was about 3 billion miles (5 billion km) from Earth on the day of the flyby.

What did New Horizons find on Pluto’s surface?

New Horizons observed a large, young, heart-shaped region of ice on Pluto and found mountains made of water ice that may float on top of nitrogen ice. It discovered large chasms on Charon and found that its north pole was covered with reddish material that had escaped from Pluto’s atmosphere.

How long did it take New Horizons to study Pluto?

Left: The launch of New Horizons on an Atlas V rocket in 2006. Middle: The nine-sided New Horizons mission patch. Right: Illustration of the New Horizons spacecraft highlighting its science instruments. Credits: NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute.

Is Pluto bigger than Mercury?

Smallest Planet: Mercury The first is an object’s mass (how much matter it contains) and the second is its volume (how much space it takes up). In case you’re wondering, though, Mercury is still significantly larger than the dwarf planet Pluto: Pluto’s equatorial diameter is just 2,302 km, about half Mercury’s width.

What is the New Horizons mission to Pluto?

In Depth: New Horizons. New Horizons is a NASA mission to study the dwarf planet Pluto, its moons, and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system that extends from about 30 AU, near the orbit of Neptune, to about 50 AU from the Sun.

Which spacecraft has been the first to visit Pluto?

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close, flying by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015.

What did New Horizons learn from its Jupiter flyby?

During the flyby, New Horizons carried out a detailed set of observations over a period of four months in early 2007. These observations were designed to gather new data on Jupiter’s atmosphere, ring system and moons (building on research from Galileo) and to test out New Horizon’s instruments.

What happened to New Horizons 2015?

A final 23-second engine burn June 29, 2015, accelerated New Horizons toward its target by about 11 inches per second (27 centimeters per second) and fine-tuned its trajectory. There was concern July 4, 2015, when New Horizons entered safe mode due to a timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence.