Say Hello to Pluto and Charon, Now in Color

This is the first color photo of Pluto and moon Charon captured by NASA’s New Horizons mission that is currently barreling in the direction of the Kuiper Belt, providing an exciting clue as to what lies in store during the spacecraft’s flyby on July 14.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is racing toward Pluto and it is expected to make a historic flyby only 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) from the dwarf planet’s surface. In the meantime, we’ve been gradually getting a sharper and sharper view of the dwarf planet and its system of moons.

This image was captured on April 9 by New Horizons’ Ralph color imager at a distance of approximately 71 million miles (115 million kilometers). At this distance, no surface features are discernible, although there does appear to be some color variations.

“This is pure exploration; we’re going to turn points of light into a planet and a system of moons before your eyes!” said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo. “New Horizons is flying to Pluto — the biggest, brightest and most complex of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. This 21st century encounter is going to be an exploration bonanza unparalleled in anticipation since the storied missions of Voyager in the 1980s.”

Pluto, Charon and a growing number of smaller moons will offer an unprescedented sceintific opportunity as our first robotic explorer to the Kuiper belt makes its historic flyby. But the mission will be far from over after July 14.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been assisting with a campaign to seek out new and mysterious Kuiper belt objects beyond Pluto that the spacecraft could also visit post-Pluto and several candidates have been found.

From Discovery News