New research suggests the Sputnik Planitia basin on Pluto may have assumed its current location because of the change in the spin of the dwarf planet. The Sputnik Planitia is a 1 000 km (621.4 miles) wide basin situated in the heart-shaped region of the Pluto's…
Chandra X-ray Observatory was aimed several times at Pluto from February 2014 through August 2015 and made a surprising detection of X-rays being emitted from this largest and best-known object in the Solar System's outermost regions. The observations offer new…
NASA's scientists have produced a mosaic of all the highest-resolution images of Pluto collected by the New Horizons spacecraft. The collection of images with a resolution of about 80 m (260 feet) per pixel now extends across the planet's hemisphere that…
NASA's New Horizons missions collected images and data indicating the isolated hills on Pluto may be fragments of water ice from the planet's surrounding uplands. The hills are thought to float in a sea of frozen nitrogen and move just like the icebergs in…
This video, made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, shows a new simulation of the space environment all the way out to Pluto in the months surrounding New Horizons’ July 2015 flyby. At the time, Goddard's…
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto obtained during its July flyby. These close-up pictures of Pluto may be the best ones for decades to come. Each week New Horizons transmits data stored on its…
NASA's New Horizons science team gathered on the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in National Harbor, Maryland, taking place from November 8 to 13, 2015, to discuss numerous exciting discoveries that…
The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, provided last week by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show the hazes scatter blue light, NASA announced on October 8, 2015. New Horizons has also detected small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto, using…
A new collection of high-resolution images of Pluto, collected by NASA's New Horizon, has revealed the minor planet's surface in amazing, previously unseen topographic and compositional details. The collected data has opened new horizons in the future research o
Today, physicist Wal Thornhill continues his discussion of NASA’s New Horizons mission to the dwarf planet Pluto. The mission has already provided a number of surprises for planetary scientists.The tiny planet’s geological activity, its apparent age, the stu
