News Archive / Tagged: New Horizons
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New Horizons parallax project seeks public participation
Laurel KornfeldFebruary 21st, 2020NASA’s New Horizons mission is seeking public participation in a project aimed at imaging the two closest stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, from Earth on April 22 and 23, the same day the spacecraft will photograph them from almost five billion miles (eight billion km) away.
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Pluto’s heart feature controls its winds
Laurel KornfeldFebruary 20th, 2020Pluto’s iconic heart feature, named Tombaugh Regio, functions as a “beating heart” that controls the small planet’s winds and might even play a role in shaping its surface features.
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Pluto’s hazy atmosphere is similar to that of Titan
Laurel KornfeldFebruary 2nd, 2020Pluto is often compared to Neptune's largest moon Triton, but its hazy atmosphere is actually more akin to that of Saturn's largest moon Titan, which is sometimes viewed as an analog of early Earth.
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New Horizons science instrument detects slowing of solar wind
Laurel KornfeldDecember 12th, 2019NASA's New Horizons mission has caught 'wind' of the ragged edges of our Solar System.
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New Horizons’ second target is formally named Arrokoth
Laurel KornfeldNovember 15th, 2019The double-lobed Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) located one billion miles beyond Pluto and visited by the New Horizons spacecraft on January 1, 2019, has been officially named Arrokoth, which means sky in the Native American Powhatan/Algonquian language.
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NASA funds study of possible Pluto orbiter
Laurel KornfeldNovember 4th, 2019There's no doubt that NASA's New Horizons mission crushed it. This has emboldened the space agency to take their exploration of the far reaches of our solar system to the next level.
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New Horizons team releases images of Pluto’s far side
Laurel KornfeldOctober 30th, 2019More than four years after New Horizons' historic July 2015 Pluto flyby, mission scientists have released detailed images of Pluto's far side, which the spacecraft was able to image only in low resolution on approach and following departure.
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Second group of names approved for features on Pluto
Laurel KornfeldOctober 24th, 2019A second set of names for features on Pluto, already used informally by members of NASA's New Horizons mission, has received formal approval by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization that names celestial objects and their features.
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Conference keeps focus on Pluto following New Horizons flyby
Laurel KornfeldJuly 23rd, 2019LAUREL, MD. -- A four-day science conference organized by the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), Universities Space Research Association (USRA), and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) held July 14-18 focused on findings obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the Pluto system in 2015 and Kuiper Belt Object Ultima Thule in 2019.
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Gas layer may be keeping Pluto’s subsurface ocean from freezing
Laurel KornfeldMay 25th, 2019A layer of gas located beneath Pluto's icy shell could be keeping the dwarf planet's subsurface ocean from freezing, according to a new study.
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Scientific paper speculates about formation of Ultima Thule
Laurel KornfeldMay 20th, 2019The first peer-reviewed academic paper about Ultima Thule based on New Horizons' flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object was published in the journal Science.
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Scientists speculate about the origins of Ultima Thule’s surface features
Laurel KornfeldMarch 20th, 2019The first primordial contact binary object ever studied up close, Ultima Thule continues to puzzle scientists with its strange shape.
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New 3D images show detailed view of Ultima Thule
Laurel KornfeldMarch 9th, 2019Scientists on NASA's New Horizons team have created a 3D image of Ultima Thule by combining pictures of the object taken from a variety of angles.
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Ancient subsurface ocean likely source of Charon’s surface ice
Laurel KornfeldFebruary 25th, 2019A study of data returned by New Horizons about Pluto's moon Charon indicates its surface ice originated via eruptions of an ancient subsurface ocean.
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New Horizons’ LORRI captures details on Ultima Thule’s surface
Laurel KornfeldFebruary 23rd, 2019A risky maneuver by New Horizons aimed at obtaining high resolution images of Ultima Thule's surface just before the vehicle's closest approach succeeded.
