News Archive / Tagged: Solar System

• New Pluto images reveal stunningly diverse terrains, atmosphere

  Laurel KornfeldSeptember 12th, 2015

  NASA’s New Horizons has sent back the first in its yearlong downlink of high-resolution images and data from its July 14, 2015, flyby of Pluto. The data, sent from Sept. 5 to 7, revealed a stunning diversity of terrains and a many-layered atmosphere that are leaving scientists in awe.

• Pluto surprises scientists with atmospheric haze and flowing ice

  Laurel KornfeldJuly 24th, 2015

  Pluto’s complex surface geology and unusual atmosphere continue to baffle scientists almost two weeks after the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft returns data from the historic July 14, 2015, flyby. Images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), released at a press conference on Friday, July 24, show evidence […]

• New Horizons releases best Pluto images as encounter officially begins

  Laurel KornfeldJuly 8th, 2015

  NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft returned to normal science operations on Tuesday, July 7, the first official day of its long-anticipated Pluto encounter mode, with all of its seven instruments now active. In the early hours of July 8, on its second official day of the encounter, mission scientists received this latest picture of Pluto, featured above, […]

• Fresh crater near Sirenum Fossae region of Mars

  NASAJune 7th, 2015

  The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a “fresh” (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars on March 30, 2015.