In a recent study submitted to Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, an international team of researchers discuss the various mission design options for reaching a hypothetical Planet 9, also known as "Planet X," which state-of-the-art ...
Space Exploration
Sep 14, 2022
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Five years ago today, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made history. After a voyage of nearly 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, the intrepid piano-sized probe flew within 7,800 miles of Pluto. For the first time ever, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2020
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When the New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto in 2015, one of the many fascinating features its images revealed was that this small, frigid world in the distant solar system has a hazy atmosphere. Now, new data helps explain ...
Space Exploration
May 14, 2020
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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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Safe to say, 2020 came in more quietly for many members of the New Horizons mission team than did 2019.
Space Exploration
Jan 3, 2020
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About a billion miles more distant than Pluto is Ultima Thule, a peanut-shaped object in the outer solar system that's the farthest place ever visited by humans.
Space Exploration
May 21, 2019
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On Jan. 2, the New Horizons spacecraft made the most distant flyby ever attempted, successfully returning images of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule. While the world is agog at the so-called "snowman" shape of this icy ...
Space Exploration
Jan 15, 2019
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday, skimming past a tiny, icy object 4 billion miles from Earth that looks to be shaped like a bowling pin.
Space Exploration
Jan 1, 2019
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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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The NASA spacecraft that yielded the first close-up views of Pluto opened the new year at an even more distant world, a billion miles beyond.
Space Exploration
Jan 1, 2019
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