Space & Astronomy

New video imagines touching down on Pluto

By T.K. Randall
July 17, 2016

Image: New Horizons Photograph of Pluto (2015)
Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / (PD) While a mission to land on the surface of Pluto is unlikely to happen anytime soon, NASA's highly successful New Horizons probe, which last year flew by the Pluto system after a journey spanning nine years and covering three billion miles, gave us a good idea of what that might be like.

Now the space agency has released a new video composed of over 100 separate images taken by the spacecraft to simulate the experience of descending down on to Pluto's surface from space."Just over a year ago, Pluto was just a dot in the distance," said principle investigator Alan Stern.

"This video shows what it would be like to ride aboard an approaching spacecraft and see Pluto grow to become a world, and then to swoop down over its spectacular terrains as if we were approaching some future landing."


Source: Space.com

Tags: Pluto, New Horizons