The New Horizons spacecraft will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, but people here on Earth will be able to follow along on the journey using a free app. New Horizons, a new video from Erik Wernquist, a computer animator from Sweden, is also available, showing an idea of what the landscape would look like from the surface of the distant icy body.
Pluto Safari was developed by the same team that produces SkySafari, a popular application for amateur astronomers and sky gazers. The program is available for both Android and iOS platforms. The app includes information about the history of the New Horizons program, including milestones during the course of the mission. A map of the solar system is available in Pluto Safari, allowing users to zoom in on the location of the spacecraft. Details of the distant dwarf planet are also included in the app, allowing users to quickly look up information on the body, once classified as the ninth planet in the Solar System. Countdown timers record the time and distance remaining before the spacecraft passes by the tiny body.
On June 14, NASA officials ordered the spacecraft to undergo a 45-engine burst, redirecting its course slightly with less than a month before the close encounter. This maneuver changed the velocity of the vehicle by about 1.16 miles per hour. At its current distance of 2.95 billion miles from Earth, it takes around 4.5 hours for commands to reach the spacecraft from Earth or for data to be received.
At launch on January 29, 2006, New Horizons had the highest launch speed of any man-made object ever to leave the Earth. On June 15, the vehicle was roughly 22 million miles from Pluto, or slightly less than 100 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Mission planners report the spacecraft is healthy.
Pluto has five known moons, including the giant Charon, large enough in comparison with its parent body that the two are considered to be a double system. At its closest approach, New Horizons will pass closer to Pluto than Charon does as the two orbit each other.
The New Horizons video is available on the National Space Society YouTube channel.
Within months of the launch of New Horizons, Pluto was demoted to its current classification as a dwarf planet. This exploration takes place at the same time as the Dawn spacecraft investigates the dwarf planet nearest Earth, Ceres.
For people without the ability to download the app to a phone or tablet, a limited version of the system is also available online.
