NASA spacecraft to search for rings and moons near Pluto

Spacecraft New Horizons has begun exploring Pluto’s environment. Rings and moons are being searched for near the dwarf planet. The main reason for this assignment is to prevent New Horizons from crashing.

Space.com reports this based on statements from NASA. New Horizons was launched in 2006 and was created to investigate Pluto. After a long journey, the plan is to fly close to the planet in July. The goal is to do research: NASA wants to learn more about the distant dwarf planet and its environment. For example, Pluto is known to have five moons, but it is possible that there are many more.

On May 10, New Horizons began scanning the environment for space objects, such as rings of matter or undiscovered moons. The spacecraft mainly does this to prevent it from flying into something. Pluto’s environment contains many objects as it is located in the Kuiper belt: a cloud of billions of objects that resides on the outside of our solar system. Even a collision with a small object could cause irreparable damage. This is partly because the spacecraft is moving at a speed of 52,416 km per hour, according to NASA.

NASA expects New Horizons to fly past Pluto on July 14. That would be the first fly-by ever. There are cameras on board, so photos can be taken. Incidentally, New Horizons has previously taken pictures at some distance from Pluto. The moons are also visible in the images sent to Earth.