NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red, and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon.
New Horizons conducted a six-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015, helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system, then venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation. The spacecraft is now more than 5 billion miles from Earth and uses machine-learning AI software to make searches beyond the Kuiper Belt much faster and more productive.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute