Related topics: spacecraft · solar system

Pluto flyby significant for city where icy world discovered

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 ...

Naming features on Pluto

'Here be Dragons…' read the inscriptions of old maps used by early seafaring explorers. Such maps were crude, and often wildly inaccurate.

Pluto's moon Hydra

In 1930, Pluto was observed for the first time. For many decades, astronomers thought that the "ninth planet of the Solar System" was a solitary object. But by 1978, astronomers discovered that it also had a moon roughly ...

Ready for its close-up: First spacecraft to explore Pluto

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was expected to get up-close and personal with Pluto on Tuesday, on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the small icy world left unexplored until now.

Is there life on Pluto?

First discovered in 1930, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in our Solar System for many decades. And though its status has since been downgraded to that of a dwarf planet, thanks to the discovery of Eris in 2004, ...

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