More recently, the Curiosity rover observed the comet Siding Spring , as it flew near Mars in Mars rovers also routinely make observations of the Sun itself, including sunspots. Occasionally, the international flotilla of satellites orbiting Mars makes astronomical observations, too.
But astronomers have rarely considered sending probes into deep space. One reason is the time it would take for these instruments to gather good measurements. Because New Horizons is combining its shots with images taken from Earth, it can get a parallax in one go, without having to wait. But he adds that getting a better measurement was never the goal. The point was to demonstrate how far human ingenuity has come.
News 04 NOV News 01 OCT Article 18 AUG News 09 NOV Converting the AU scale to one we are more familiar with, New Horizons is now almost 5 billion miles 7. This means communicating with the spacecraft takes a lot of time. At the time of the Pluto flyby, two-way communication between New Horizons and Earth required a nine-hour round trip — 4.
New Horizons was so busy gathering data in its July encounter that, as planned, the spacecraft didn't communicate with Earth during its closest approach to Pluto and the dwarf planet's largest moon, Charon.
Controllers celebrated when New Horizons phoned home, as they knew that data was on the way. Pluto's distance, about 3 billion miles 5 billion km from Earth, presented power challenges for the New Horizons designers since the sun's rays at that distance are too weak to generate power.
There are also long communications delays for those staying in touch with the 1,lb. When New Horizons reached Pluto, it took 4. This was because New Horizons could only transmit about kilobits of data per second and there were about 6.
It was undoubtedly worth the wait. Early pictures from New Horizons showed a surprisingly young surface on Pluto, with a mountain range as high as 11, feet 3, meters.
Believed to be about million years old at most, this range likely points to recent geological activity on the surface, but it's unclear what caused it.
More youthful terrain — such as a huge plain bereft of craters, just north of the mountainous range — popped up in pictures sent back in mid-July of The zone has been informally named Sputnik Planitia and is a region of intense scrutiny, given that geologists are still trying to figure out what caused it.
Fortunately, the moons were found well ahead of the Pluto encounter, and New Horizons faced no obstacles while whizzing through Pluto's system. Some of New Horizons' other scientific discoveries included evidence of a past subsurface ocean on Charon and strange water-ice hills on Pluto floating in frozen nitrogen. In , one study suggested that there may be an asphalt layer on Pluto , just beneath the world's surface.
Some scientists have also suggested that Pluto could have the ingredients for life on its surface, even at its great distance from the sun. Related: Meet the unknown female mathematician whose calculations helped discover Pluto.
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Pluto is too far from the sun to allow a spacecraft to produce electricity with solar panels. August 3, Falcon 9. March 9, Mission Reports.
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