New Horizons probe heading for Pluto

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2015 looks like being a good year for astronomy: not only will Rosetta be recording the action as comet 67P goes round the sun, but NASA's New Horizons probe will give us our first ever close-up look at Pluto and its satellites. The probe is currently 200 million km from Pluto, and the closest approach (about 14,000 km) is not until 14 July. However, the first photographs should be received by Tuesday, as the mission control starts work on checking and adjusting the precise trajectory.

There's a BBC News article with more details.

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New Horizons has just got its first colour photo of Pluto and Charon. OK, they're still fuzzy blobs, but they are off-white fuzzy blobs. More details in the inevitable BBC News article.

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It seems I update this thread about every three months!

Tomorrow is fly-by day for New Horizons, with its closest approach to Pluto at 12:50 BST (07:50 EDT, 21:50 AEST). The probe will be too busy taking pictures and making measurements, so we won't hear anything from it until late tomorrow / early Wednesday - there will be a lot of people waiting nervously in the mission control.

More details in the usual BBC article, including a lot of links to previous articles.

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Much sooner than three months after the last post...

As everyone is probably aware, New Horizons survived its transit of the Pluto system, and is now sending back its data, steadily if very slowly. For those interested, in the UK or able to access the BBC iPlayer, there is a a "The Sky At Night" special on Pluto, tonight at 22:00 BST.

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More news from Pluto via the BBC: the possibility of nitrogen glaciers, and some more pictures.

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And another BBC article: another batch of pictures, including the best ones so far of Charon, Pluto's largest moon.

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The usual drill: the latest snippet from the BBC, this time with the possibility of volcanoes on Pluto. It's not yet clear whether these surface features are actually volcanoes, let alone whether they are still active, but it's an intriguing prospect.

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More pictures, via the BBC - these are the first high-resolution images to be released, showing details down to a scale of about 80m (250 feet) per pixel.

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And some more news, from the BBC as ever: part of Sputnik Planum (the roughly heart-shaped region) has been formed by slow convection in nitrogen ice, which can flow much as water ice glaciers do on Earth. This means that the surface is completely renewed in a million years or less, explaining the lack of meteor craters.

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That is interesting. I hadn't honestly realised Pluto had so much nitrogen ice...