spacetoday.net: New Horizons takes new images of Pluto

Posted: Thu, Feb 5, 2015, 6:15 AM ET (1115 GMT)
New Horizons image of Pluto, 2015 Feb 4 (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

NASA released Wednesday new images of Pluto and its largest moon taken by the New Horizons missions, the first from the spacecraft since it began the encounter phase of its mission. The images, taken in late January by the spacecraft's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument, are the best images to date taken by the spacecraft. Pluto is resolved in the LORRI images, but shows little detail; by May, though, the spacecraft will be providing images with resolutions better than the Hubble Space Telescope as it closes in on the dwarf planet. The spacecraft, launched in 2006, will fly past Pluto in mid-July. NASA and the New Horizons team released the images Wednesday on the 109th anniversary of the birth of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.