the new horizons mission reached pluto on july 14, 2015.
when did the new horizons mission reach pluto?
july 14 , 2015
"new horizons" made its closest approach to pluto on july 14, 2015, after a 3,462-day journey across the solar system. scientific observations of pluto began five months before the closest approach and continued for at least a month after the encounter. observations were conducted using a remote sensing package that included imaging instruments and a radio science investigation tool, as well as spectroscopic and other experiments. the scientific goals of "new horizons" were to characterize the global geology and morphology of pluto and its moon charon, map their surface composition, and analyze pluto's neutral atmosphere and its escape rate. on october 25, 2016, at 05:48 pm et, the last bit of data (of a total of 50 billion bits of data; or 6.25 gigabytes) was received from "new horizons" from its close encounter with pluto.
pluto
images from july 1 to 3, 2013, by lorri were the first by the probe to resolve pluto and charon as separate objects. on july 14, 2014, mission controllers performed a sixth trajectory-correction maneuver (tcm) since its launch to enable the craft to reach pluto. between july 19–24, 2014, "new horizons" lorri snapped 12 images of charon revolving around pluto, covering almost one full rotation at distances ranging from about . in august 2014, astronomers made high-precision measurements of pluto's location and orbit around the sun using the atacama large millimeter/submillimeter array (alma) to help nasa's "new horizons" spacecraft accurately home in on pluto. on december 6, 2014, mission controllers sent a signal for the craft to "wake up" from its final pluto-approach hibernation and begin regular operations. the craft's response that it was "awake" arrived to earth on december 7, 2014, at 02:30 utc.
new horizons