Pluto, 4 million kilometersI’m pretty sure we’re contractually obligated to share the ne

Pluto, 4 million kilometersI’m pretty sure we’re contractually obligated to share the new images of Pluto within a few hours after NASA provides them. We’ll get more new images on Sunday and Monday, but then on Tuesday we won’t, because during the flyby itself the New Horizons spacecraft will be collecting data automatically and will not transmit data to Earth. It will take until Wednesday before we get the first up-close, fly-by image of Pluto.Aside from that, here’s the image sent by the New Horizons spacecraft to Earth on Saturday. The spacecraft was ~4 million kilometers from Pluto when it took this shot, an improvement of about a million kilometers over the distance from yesterday’s image. Pluto has rotated slightly, moving some of the features seen yesterday out of frame to the right while improving the resolution on the migrating features across its surface that looked like fractures pattern in yesterday’s shots.-JBBImage credit: NASA/JHU/APLhttp://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-last-portrait-of-pluto-s-puzzling-spots -- source link

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