No one quite knows what to expect from the encounter, although the new information promises to be exciting. The spacecraft has already begun studying Pluto’s environmental makeup, extracting detailed measurements of dust and charged particles. The closest approach to the dwarf planet will occur on July 14, when New Horizons will come within 7,700 miles of its surface.
While Pluto will be sure to contain plenty of ice and snow, its landscape could come in many different forms: sheer ice cliffs, mountains and ravines, and maybe even rings of ice particles similar to Saturn’s or Neptune’s.
Until now, the only available images of Pluto have been a few grainy photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over 10 years ago. New Horizons will capture multiple high-resolution images not only of the dwarf planet, but also of its moons. The new information may even reveal evidence that its largest moon, Charon, was once home to an ocean beneath its frozen crust.
The spacecraft was launched on its mission in 2006, only months before the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto did not meet the standard definition of a planet, and demoted it to dwarf planet status instead. However, Pluto remains the largest object in the Kuiper Belt, a band of cosmic odds and ends that circles the solar system beyond Neptune. Pluto was demoted because its gravitational pull was not large enough to prevent bodies of a comparable size and mass forming in its orbit.
Even though many people still tend to think of the downgraded planet as being on the furthest edge of the solar system, scientists are already thinking about extending the mission even further. They have already identified at least two objects about a billion miles further away that New Horizons would be able to reach by 2019. If approved, the deep space mission could give humanity the unique opportunity to observe objects that have frozen since the first formation of the solar system.
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