A “heart” from Pluto as flyby begins

The New Horizons mission has officially begun the flyby sequence of science observations that will culminate with closest approach July 14.
By and | Published: July 9, 2015 | Last updated on May 18, 2023
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This image of Pluto from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was captured July 7 and received July 8, and has been combined with lower-resolution color information from the Ralph instrument.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
After a more than nine-year, 3-billion-mile (5 billion kilometers) journey to Pluto, it’s show time for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, as the flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.

In the early morning hours of July 8, mission scientists received this new view of Pluto — the most detailed yet returned by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. The image was taken July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode.

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This view is centered roughly on the area that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. This side of Pluto is dominated by three broad regions of varying brightness. Most prominent are an elongated dark feature at the equator, informally known as “the whale,” and a large heart-shaped bright area measuring some 1,200 miles (2,000km) across on the right. Above those features is a polar region that is intermediate in brightness.

“The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today,” said Jeff Moore, Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team Leader of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It will be incredible!”

Approaching Pluto

Regularly uploaded raw, unprocessed 100-millisecond images of the Pluto system from New Horizons’ LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).