All data transmissions from the historic NASA Pluto mission New Horizons is finally complete. This probe captured high-resolution imagery of the dwarf planet in July 2015.
This week, mission scientists received the final bits of data to intensively study and analyze Pluto after waiting since the launch of the spacecraft from Earth in 2006. The journey towards Pluto took almost a decade. The probe conducted a flyby of Pluto from 7,800 miles above its surface and captured photos of incredible landscapes, proving that the planet is dynamic as opposed to being dry and frozen.
The data is a total of 50 gigabits and traveled through millions of miles across deep space to reach Earth. NASA first received high-resolution imagery and datasets just a few days after New Horizons' final approached the dwarf planet. The rest of the data began transmitting in September 2015.
According to New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, there is a massive amount of science for the team to understand, specifically, 400 scientific observations that have transmitted back to Earth.
The New Horizons spacecraft is now headed to the Kuiper Belt, which is the region of the solar system beyond Neptune filled with icy objects such as comets and asteroids. Astronomers believe that these icy, primordial objects have not been changed since the infancy of our solar system. New Horizons is set to arrive at a Kuiper Belt object target in January 2019.