They share a similar, growing excitement as New Horizons begins its approach to Pluto. Many remember how Voyager 2’s approach images of Neptune and its planet-sized moon Triton fueled anticipation of the discoveries to come. Several senior members of the New Horizons science team were young members of Voyager’s science team in 1989. “Now we stand on Voyager’s broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and mysterious Pluto system.” “NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system where the giant planets orbit,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Although the spacecraft will be much farther from the planet than Voyager 2’s closest approach, New Horizons’ telescopic camera was able to obtain several long-distance “approach” shots of Neptune on July 10. New Horizons now is about 2.48 billion miles from Neptune - nearly 27 times the distance between the Earth and our sun - as it crosses the giant planet’s orbit at 10:04 p.m. Now it will be New Horizons’ turn to reveal the unexplored Pluto and its moons in stunning detail next summer on its way into the vast outer reaches of the solar system.” “Exactly 25 years ago at Neptune, Voyager 2 delivered our ‘first’ look at an unexplored planet. “It’s a cosmic coincidence that connects one of NASA’s iconic past outer solar system explorers, with our next outer solar system explorer,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington. New Horizons’ milestone matches precisely the 25th anniversary of the historic encounter of NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft with Neptune on Aug. The sophisticated piano-sized spacecraft, which launched in January 2006, reached Neptune’s orbit - nearly 2.75 billion miles from Earth - in a record eight years and eight months. This is its last major crossing en route to becoming the first probe to make a close encounter with distant Pluto on July 14, 2015. NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has traversed the orbit of Neptune. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft captured this view of the giant planet Neptune and its large moon Triton on July 10, 2014, from a distance of about 2.45 billion miles (3.96 billion kilometers) – more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and sun.
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