Pluto Flyby by New Horizons (Actual View From Spacecraft) 2015 NASA (JQ Music)

Originally a public domain film from NASA.

The film was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by S. Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which as of 2019 includes 2014 MU69. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.

On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s; 58,500 km/h; 36,400 mph). It was the fastest man-made object ever launched from Earth. After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007, at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons' speed; the flyby also enabled a general test of New Horizons' scientific capabilities, returning data about the planet's atmosphere, moons, and magnetosphere.

Most of the post-Jupiter voyage was spent in hibernation mode to preserve on-board systems, except for brief annual checkouts. On December 6, 2014, New Horizons was brought back online for the Pluto encounter, and instrument check-out began. On January 15, 2015, the spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto.

On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC, it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet. On October 25, 2016, at 21:48 UTC, the last of the recorded data from the Pluto flyby was received from New Horizons. Having completed its flyby of Pluto, New Horizons then maneuvered for a flyby of Kuiper belt object (486958) 2014 MU69 "Ultima Thule", which occurred on January 1, 2019, when it was 43.4 AU from the Sun. In August 2018, NASA cited results by Alice on New Horizons to confirm the existence of a "hydrogen wall" at the outer edges of the Solar System. This "wall" was first detected in 1992 by the two Voyager spacecraft...

New Horizons passed within 12,500 km (7,800 mi) of Pluto, with this closest approach on July 14, 2015, at 11:50 UTC. New Horizons had a relative velocity of 13.78 km/s (49,600 km/h; 30,800 mph) at its closest approach, and came as close as 28,800 km (17,900 mi) to Charon. Starting 3.2 days before the closest approach, long-range imaging included the mapping of Pluto and Charon to 40 km (25 mi) resolution. This is half the rotation period of the Pluto–Charon system and allowed imaging of all sides of both bodies. Close range imaging was repeated twice per day in order to search for surface changes caused by localized snow fall or surface cryovolcanism. Because of Pluto's tilt, a portion of the northern hemisphere would be in shadow at all times. During the flyby, engineers expected LORRI to be able to obtain select images with resolution as high as 50 m per pixel (160 ft/px) if closest distance were around 12,500 km, and MVIC was expected to obtain four-color global dayside maps at 1.6 km (1 mi) resolution. LORRI and MVIC attempted to overlap their respective coverage areas to form stereo pairs. LEISA obtained hyperspectral near-infrared maps at 7 km/px (4.3 mi/px) globally and 0.6 km/px (0.37 mi/px) for selected areas...

Soon after the Pluto flyby, in July 2015, New Horizons reported that the spacecraft was healthy, its flight path was within the margins, and science data of the Pluto–Charon system had been recorded. The spacecraft's immediate task was to begin returning the 6.25 gigabytes of information collected... it could only transmit data at 1 to 2 kilobits per second...

The transfer was completed on October 25, 2016 at 21:48 UTC...