Today is, without a doubt, Pluto day
For most of us on Earth, this will be our last chance to see a new planet for the first time up close and personal. Today, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will finally make its pass nearest to Pluto, the much debated and no longer official planet. New Horizons has spent the past 9 years in space, traveling over 3 billion miles and passing most “landmark” planets in our solar system along the way. On July 14th, 2015, it will finally reach Pluto. No spacecraft, satellite, or high resolution imagery has come even remotely close to what New Horizons will provide us with in terms of detail regarding Pluto.
Already, New Horizons is allowing NASA’s team to make some incredible discoveries and bring forth some new information. While Pluto’s size has been debated for many years, we now have a very firm estimate on the size of Pluto. NASA’s team of specialists calculated a diameter of 1,473 miles. This is slightly larger than previous estimates. Perhaps even more exciting is the prospect of high resolution imagery which New Horizons will capture.