NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is currently taking historic closeup images of Pluto, but it won't start transmitting data back to Earth until about 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Until then, NASA is releasing the most detailed views of Pluto we've ever seen, views that will only improve in clarity once a "waterfall" of data comes in over the next several weeks to months, according to scientists working on the mission.
This new image, released on Tuesday morning, shows the surface features of Pluto in striking clarity, including the heart-shaped feature on the southern side of the dwarf planet. NASA released a version of this image on Instagram at 7 a.m. ET, but subsequently published a high-res version on their website.
Alan Stern, who is the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission and has spent more than a decade on a quest to explore the space object, said the imagery will only improve with time.
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"By tomorrow we'll be able to show you imagery with resolution up to ten times the resolution of that image," Stern said at a NASA press conference on Tuesday.
Stern said there is evidence that it snows on Pluto, though it's different than the snow that occurs on Earth. On Pluto, the snow is made up of frozen nitrogen, scientists think. "It sure looks that way," Stern said, when asked about the snow.
Once the spacecraft passes Pluto late on Tuesday, the probe will afford scientists with an unprecedented look back at the dwarf planet, which will help them observe its atmosphere and get more information about its composition. This look into the rear view mirror, so to speak, will also afford scientists with an image of the rest of the solar system.
New Horizons’ journey to Pluto -- a 9-year, 3 billion-mile journey -- took about 52 seconds less than predicted when the craft was launched in January 2006, according to NASA. A release says "the spacecraft threaded the needle through a 36-by-57 mile (60-by-90 kilometer) window in space -- the equivalent of a commercial airliner arriving no more off target than the width of a tennis ball."
New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, and is passing Pluto at a speed greater than 30,000 miles per hour.
Once the spacecraft regains contact on Tuesday night, it will take 16 months for New Horizons to send its cache of 10 years' worth of data back to Earth, a NASA press release stated.
"We're just scratching the surface of our solar system," said John Grunsfeld, the NASA associate administrator for the science mission directorate. "This is true exploration."
“As New Horizons completes its flyby of Pluto and continues deeper into the Kuiper Belt, NASA's multifaceted journey of discovery continues," said John Holdren, President Obama's science advisor.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden hailed the arrival at Pluto as a U.S. achievement.