It took nearly a decade to travel three billion miles through our solar system, but NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has finally reached Pluto.


New Horizons sped past Pluto early Tuesday morning, making its closest approach at 7:49 a.m. EDT. Pluto was once considered the ninth, and most distant, planet in our solar system, but was downgraded to dwarf planet status in 2005.






A map charting New Horizons' progress





The probe has been snapping hundreds of stunning photos of Pluto and its moons: Charon, which is about the size of Texas, plus the smaller moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra. The New Horizons mission has gone smoothly since its launch in 2006 - no small feat, considering that its delicate instruments could be badly damaged by even the smallest space particles as it zips through space at 36,000 miles per hour.




An image of Pluto taken during New Horizon's closest flyby





While NASA engineers celebrated the technical feat, they won't be able to fully exhale until the spacecraft once again makes contact with the tracking station near the Australian capital of Canberra. That's expected to happen on Wednesday morning, at which time New Horizons will upload more high-resolution photos for the world to see. Traveling at the speed of light, transmissions take more than four hours to reach Earth.




New Horizons is about the size of a baby grand piano





New Horizons won't land on Pluto, but it's expected to provide invaluable data to further our knowledge of space. Scientists have already found that Pluto is a little bit bigger - by a diameter of fifty miles - than previously thought. After the probe passes Pluto, it will continue to explore the Kuiper belt - the area of our solar system beyond the planets that contains remnants of the universe's creation. After this, it will eventually leave our solar system entirely and enter interstellar space.

New horizon runs on just 225 volts which is jst enough to run a coffee machine
Nasa wale kbbe aa chandre

waste of money and time so many thing on earth we can do with tht money   :sad:

You know as much as mai in favour hundi ah sciencey cheezan di, but ah kam karke, ehna paisa kharach ke other than the careers involved kise nu ki? Like wow, I agree ah paisa kithe hor kharacheya jaa sakda si =D>

like india spent so much money for finding water on mars lol but they could not find water in indian village whr ppl need water for drinking  :D:

i was looking to post some more updates of nasa's projects like
Mars Missions
Orion Spacecraft
Space Launch System
Earth Missions
Hubble Space Telescope
Spitzer Space Telescope
Cassini at Saturn
James Webb Space Telescope
bt i think i should hv to stop




ptandro tusi ta serious ee le gye :