Ninety years ago today, Clyde Tombaugh, a young astronomer working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. In doing so he unknowingly opened the door to the vast "third zone" of the solar system we ...
Space Exploration
Feb 19, 2020
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Like other bodies in the outer Solar System, Pluto may have have rings orbiting it. Finding these rings could be important for the safety of NASA's New Horizons mission - currently en route to the tiny world.
Space Exploration
Jan 25, 2012
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An unmanned NASA spacecraft whizzed by Pluto, beaming to scientists a message that it survived its historic encounter before sending back the closest look ever of the distant dwarf planet.
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2015
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NASA rang in the New Year on Tuesday with a historic flyby of the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever explored by humankind—a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule—in the hopes of learning more ...
Space Exploration
Jan 1, 2019
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A newly downlinked spectral observation of Pluto's moon Nix from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft provides compelling evidence that its surface is covered in water ice, similar to what the New Horizons team discovered recently ...
Space Exploration
Jun 20, 2016
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A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger ...
Astronomy
Oct 3, 2023
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As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft closes in on Pluto—scheduled to make its closest approach on July 14—another mission much closer to Earth has caught sight of the dwarf planet's shadow: On June 29, SOFIA (Stratospheric ...
Space Exploration
Jul 8, 2015
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Using sophisticated computer simulations and observations, a team led by researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has shown how the so-called trans-Neptunian objects (or TNOs) ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2019
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The new pictures that NASA's New Horizons probe has begun to beam back have revealed Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in ever greater detail from what is the first ever spacecraft fly-by.
Space Exploration
Jul 6, 2015
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What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic ...
Space Exploration
May 28, 2015
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