Pluto latest news was received from the New Horizons spacecraft having travelled over 3.4 billion miles, or 5.5 billion kilometers (five hours, eight minutes at light speed), this was a segment of a Pluto-Charon observation sequence taken by the Ralph/LEISA imager which arrived at mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, at 5:48 a.m. EDT on Oct. 25 2015.
Receiving the data at a fraction of the speed of a dial-up Internet connection (about 2,000 bits per second). The long wait for scientists had to be expected due to the various interruptions and the fact that the same receiving antennas were used for other ground operations.
With the last bits of information on Pluto latest news collected at NASA's Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia. The Total of Pluto system data transmitted to Earth by New Horizons over the past 15 months was 50 gigabits! ( according to space flight now)
Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said,
- "The Pluto system data that New Horizons collected has amazed us over and over again with the beauty and complexity of Pluto and its system of moons,"
He added, "There's a great deal of work ahead for us to understand the 400-plus scientific observations that have all been sent to Earth. And that's exactly what we're going to do-after all, who knows when the next data from a spacecraft visiting Pluto will be sent?"
(according to NASA)
Scientists at NASA expect to be gathering a few more data on the coming target for New Horizons just about 13 to 25 miles (21 to 40 kilometers) across, where experts believe to contain remains from the ancient solar system.
New Horizons will fly by Pluto again on Jan. 1, 2019, at a distance of about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometres) during an extended mission phase approved by NASA earlier this year.
While waiting for Pluto's latest news, the New Horizons science team will stay busy combing through the data haul from last year's Pluto encounter.
As Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman, of APL Said, "We have our pot of gold,".
