auralvance

Considering the speed of NH, what percentage of Pluto/Charon will actually be visible during the brief flyby?

Footnote: Sooo immensely pumped for this. I watched the launch way back when in college and this feels like a whole piece of my life. Thank you for all the hard work and I can't wait to see the final results!

If you think about it, those series of pictures will be taken looking back at the entire solar system, for the first time ever.

Obviously other planets won't be visible, and the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud still count as the solar system, but we will have actual pictures... from beyond Pluto. Fascinating.

Now of course if they actually do a Kuiper Belt rendezvous, that's even more chilling to think of pictures at that distance.

Edit: I didn't realize that Pluto was actually inside the orbit of Neptune at the time of the Pale Blue Dot photo. Either way, cool stuff!

NH is traveling at such a high velocity they would need much more fuel than it is currently carrying. They had to travel at such a high velocity in order to make it there in a reasonable amount of time, Pluto is very far out.