Pluto & its largest moon Charon. Photo credit: NASA
After 9 years and 3 billion miles, New Horizons is now less than a million miles from Pluto. Tomorrow, the SUV-sized space probe will perform its Pluto flyby at 7800 miles from the surface of the former planet.
Amazing stuff.
I find it amazing that Voyager 1 was launched 35 years ago, and the probe is still speeding off towards interstellar space. V1 is the most far-flung, man-made object at 11.3 billion miles from our sun. It has already studied the systems of Jupiter and Saturn, and now V1 is nearing the end of our solar system.
Voyager 2, which launched 16 days earlier than V1, also passed by Jupiter & Saturn, as well as Uranus and Neptune. V2 is lagging slightly behind as it is only 9.3 billion miles away from the sun.
Pretty damn cool.
Happy birthday Voyager.
