Pluto New Horizon

The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), often referred to as the “eagle eyes” of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, played a crucial role in capturing the first close-up images of Pluto and other distant worlds in the Kuiper Belt. Equipped with Optimax lenses, this high-magnification black-and-white camera features a telescope with an 8.2-inch aperture, which focuses visible light onto a charge-coupled device (CCD), similar to a digital camera. LORRI’s powerful optics allowed it to map Pluto’s far side and provide detailed geologic data from long distances, significantly enhancing our understanding of this distant region.

The New Horizons mission will help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation.

New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007 and will conduct a five-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in the summer of 2015. Pluto’s closest approach is scheduled for July 14, 2015. As part of an extended mission, the spacecraft is expected to head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit.

Sending a spacecraft on this long journey will help us answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup, and atmospheres of these bodies.

LAUNCHED: 2006

Check out the entire mission details on the NASA website:

Videos and Images Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

• Pluto New Horizon Mission
• Pluto New Horizon – Stories