New Horizons scientists use enhanced color images to detect differences in the composition and texture of Pluto's surface. When close-up images are combined with color data from the Ralph instrument, it paints a new and surprising ...
Space Exploration
Jul 27, 2015
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The past couple of years have been very exciting for space exploration. We've watched as spacecraft made visits to Mars, comet 67P and, just last week, Pluto, which for decades marked the edge of our solar system.
Space Exploration
Jul 23, 2015
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Carl Sagan famously said we were the luckiest generation, to be present during the first reconnaissance of the solar system. The New Horizons mission to Pluto completes this half-century project with its stunning images and ...
Space Exploration
Jul 21, 2015
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Drifting along at what for decades was regarded as the outer boundary of our solar system, icy Pluto is far from alone. The dwarf planet has moons – at least five of them – which are all fascinating little worlds in their ...
Space Exploration
Jul 17, 2015
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Our solar system's shadowy ninth (dwarf) planet was the subject of furious speculation and a frantic search for almost a century before it was finally discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. And remarkably, Pluto's reality ...
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2015
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Back in 1930, it was an easy answer – Pluto was a planet because we couldn't see anything else brighter at a similar distance away from us, says Dejan Stojkovic, an associate professor of physics in the University at Buffalo ...
Space Exploration
Jul 17, 2015
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Mankind's first close-up look at Pluto did not disappoint Wednesday: The pictures showed ice mountains on Pluto about as high as the Rockies and chasms on its big moon Charon that appear six times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
Space Exploration
Jul 16, 2015
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Pluto's surface has long been a blur to sky watchers on Earth, but a NASA spacecraft on Wednesday should provide the first high-resolution images of the distant dwarf planet after a historic flyby mission.
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2015
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On Jan. 19, 2006, NASA launched a space probe the size of a golf cart on a mission to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system; its destination was the Kuiper Belt, a frigid region beyond the planets, populated with ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2015
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The observatory where Pluto was discovered is taking full advantage of a flyby of the icy dwarf planet Tuesday with astronomy-themed face painting, an extra Pluto presentation and a live NASA stream that will tell the world ...
Space Exploration
Jul 14, 2015
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