Jane Edwards
A NASA spacecraft with a Ball Aerospace & Technologies-built camera is scheduled to arrive at Pluto on July 14.
Ball Aerospace said Wednesday the 23-pound Ralph camera will work to gather images of the planet as the New Horizons spacecraft performs flybys within 7,000 miles of Pluto.
“We know so little about Pluto that we expect the mission to help answer questions we haven’t even thought to ask,†said Jim Oschmann, vice president and general manager for Civil Space and Technology business unit at Ball Aerospace.
The camera is one of the seven tools aboard the space vehicle and has four color and three panchromatic imaging systems, according to the company.
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Southwest Research Institute assembled the spacecraft for NASA.
Alan Stern of SwRI serves as the principal investigator of the Pluto flyby mission, Ball Aerospace added.
