NASA's New Horizons mission has brought much information about Pluto. There is much curiosity about this dwarf planet since it is one of the farthest from the Earth and has been well-known for many years. Now the New Horizons Pluto mission ends, and this gives reason to look as to why it's a major milestone.
The last data from 2015 has been transmitted by New Horizons to Earth. With this new data, there would much new information that NASA and astronomers would be going through in the coming months that could shed more light on Pluto. The mission has been the nearest so far that has studied much of Pluto.
The observations taken by New Horizons arrived here on Earth on October 25 at 5:48 a.m. EDT. The information was taken by the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland after a downlink coming from the NASA Deep Space Network in Canberra, Australia. The data is said to be the last coming from New Horizons on Pluto.
New Horizons had to gather so much data, since it wouldn't get another chance of getting that much information on Pluto, according to NASA's official site. It took in 100 times more data as it approached Pluto. As soon as it could gather all of the data it then began to send them to Earth, where they would be studied and analyzed.
"The Pluto system data that New Horizons collected has amazed us over and over again with the beauty and complexity of Pluto and its system of Moons," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, said. He further added that there would be much work to be done in trying to understand all the information New Horizons has sent.
Alice Bowman, Missions Operations Manager at APL, said data-verification would be done before the two onboard recorders would be erased, as Phys Org reports. The next mission of New Horizons would be towards the Kuiper Belt, though it would not arrive there until January 1, 2019. As the New Horizons Pluto mission ends, it has become a success and that is why it is a major milestone. Earlier New Horizons has found what could possibly be clouds on Pluto.
