New Horizons zips past Pluto
We finally got a close-up view of Pluto on July 13, 2015, when NASA’s New Horizon’s probe zoomed past the dwarf planet. The spacecraft captured a shockingly vivid image, showing a bright heart-like feature bordered by darker equatorial terrains. The probe’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) captured this shot when it was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. Lower-resolution color data acquired earlier in the day by the probe’s Ralph instrument was combined with the LORRI data to create this striking view.
