It was february of 1930 when Clyde Tombaugh discovered what untill now had been for us the most unknown and misterious body in our solar system. And I said body because once a time this "body" had been considered as a planet. I mean Pluto, the rocky planet beyond neptune that we used to see as a little dot moving among the starfield of a plate.
In average, Pluto is 4.437.000.000 kms away from the sun in his perihelion and 7.311.000.000 kms when it reaches its aphelion, so the best picture we had of it till now, was a big dot of light, thanks to the Hubble space telescope.
For a long time we had speculated about different aspects as the real size, how it would be like when it could be seen in a closer view. And now, finally we have the answer. New Horizons probe has recently unveiled this and many other secrets about Pluto, and in the next weeks, we´ll have a lot more of information that we had never dreamed with.
It was the january 19th of 2006 when New Horizons probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, on board of an Atlas V 551 rocket. Ahead of it, a vast ocean of nothing and a journey of nine years until New Horizons woke up and focus its cameras on the planet.
And finally, on the july 14th of 2015, a dream became thruth for many people. Finally we can see Pluto in detail and his moon Charon as well.
Unfortunately, the insertion in orbit was not the goal, so what we had instead was a fast flyby close to the planet, toward the Kuiper belt. Anyway the great amount of information that we are expecting to reach ,worths it.
Some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the Pluto discoverer, were carried in the probe as a tribute to this great astronomer who died in 1997.
Some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the Pluto discoverer, were carried in the probe as a tribute to this great astronomer who died in 1997.
