Tomorrow the New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto

After 9.5 years of space travel, a distance of nearly 5 billion km, NASA's New Horizons (temporarily called the New Horizon) is about to approach Pluto (Pluto).

New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto tomorrow

Launched into space at 19:00 local time (Florida, USA) on January 19, 2006, New Horizons is implementing the mission of discovering Pluto and its largest moon Charon (there are 5 flying planets). around Pluto are Charon, Nix, Styx, Hydra and Kerberos).

At the time of launch, New Horizons was the fastest-speed spacecraft ever launched by humans, now Voyager 1 is flying faster than it, reaching 62,000 km / h.

Artwork of Pluto's surface and see its moon, Charon

Expected at 11:49 am tomorrow (July 14) , the New Horizons vessel approached Pluto and flew at a distance of 12,500 km, the speed of the ship around this dwarf is about 50,000 km / hour. New Horizons' mission is to collect the data of Pluto and the planets around it, so that humans can study more specifically about this dwarf, typically the life span, the star's structure. , surface temperature, aurora in the atmosphere . The data transfer rate from New Horizons to Earth reaches 38Kbps.

NASA expects the first photo that New Horizons took and sent from Pluto will be announced this Thursday or Friday. Alan Stern, who is mainly responsible for the New Horizons project, said the ship needed more than a year to collect enough data, before continuing with other tasks. By 2016 the ship will complete its strong porcelain.