Clicking on the graphic above loads a 1:10 scale version of the full resolution Pluto map just published based on imagery acquired by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft 7-14 July 2015. A link to the full resolution image for high-specification desktop computers with RAM to spare is included in the article below. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.The science team of NASA’s New Horizons mission has produced an updated global map of the dwarf planet Pluto. The map includes all resolved images of the surface acquired 7-14 July 2015, at pixel resolutions ranging from 40 kilometres (24 miles) on the Charon-facing hemisphere (left and right sides of the map) to 400 metres (1,250 feet) on the anti-Charon facing hemisphere (map center). Many additional images are expected in autumn 2015 and these will be used to complete the global map.
The New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto and its moons on July 14. For high-specification desktop computers with RAM to spare, a full resolution (18630 by 9315 pixel, 5.221MB) version of the above image is available by clicking here.
It is almost five months since New Horizons’ epic encounter with Pluto, but the captured images and data will stream back to Earth across 3 billion miles of interplanetary space for a further 11 months. The first in a series of the best close-ups of the dwarf planet that humans may see for decades have been released, obtained when the spacecraft was just 15 minutes before closest approach during the 14 July flyby.
Covering 1.2 million kilometres per day, NASA’s New Horizons probe is on course for a high-speed New Year’s Day flyby of the Kuiper Belt body known as Ultima Thule.
Now just one month away from entering into orbit around Ceres, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveals new pictures and a movie — the sharpest images to date of the Texas-sized dwarf planet.