WATCH New Horizon's historic flyby: Hitch a virtual ride past Pluto
NASA scientist Stuart Robbins used real photos of New Horizon's cruise past Pluto to create a stunning animation of the historic journey.
NASA scientist Stuart Robbins used real photos of New Horizon's cruise past Pluto to create a stunning animation of the historic journey.
NASA has released a stunning 3-D animation of the New Horizons historic journey past Pluto in July with real images taken by the spacecraft.
The 24-second animation begins with New Horizons鈥� approach toward Pluto on July 14. Charon, the largest of Pluto鈥檚 five moons, is seen in its counterclockwise orbit. As the spacecraft flies past Pluto, it captures a solar occultation 鈥� when the sun passes behind the planet 鈥� before zooming farther into space.
Stuart Robbins, the NASA scientist who created the video, writes on a blog that he made several tweaks to the timescale and other variables to improve its cinematic quality.
As New Horizons鈥� continues its voyage into deep space, NASA announced last week that it would next travel to 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto. The spacecraft is expected to reach it on January 1, 2019.
However, the new mission must undergo a review process by an independent team of experts to obtain additional funding for scientific research. The New Horizons鈥� team is scheduled to turn in an official proposal next year.
鈥�2014 MU69 is a great choice,鈥� Principal Investigator Alan Stern said in a statement. 鈥淭his KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen.鈥�