In January 2006, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) interplanetary space probe, New Horizons, was launched and in 2015 became the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and explore the Kuiper Belt Orbit (KBO). The KBO – originally named Ultima Thule – is a disc-shaped region extending to the outer solar system.
NASA has shared an astonishing image of the dwarf planet Pluto, taken by the international space agency’s New Horizons spacecraft.
According to NASA, the photograph was taken at a distance of 22,025 miles (35,445 km) from Pluto.
Earlier, NASA also released another photo of the “translated color image” of Pluto, taken by New Horizons.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and is considered to be the solar system’s ninth planet. However, it was demoted in 2006 at the instigation of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and reclassified as a dwarf planet.
New Horizons flew by Pluto seven years ago and explored its moons in the summer of 2015, culminating in a close fly-past of the dwarf planet.
In 2019, NASA granted another mission extension for New Horizons, which will keep the spacecraft going until 2025.
This article is originally published at sputnik.com
